Bird. Brain.

"You are a cry, cry baby!"

I am. I am a cry, cry baby.

I cry often. I weep at birds and insurance commercials, at sunrises and sunsets, at the sight of the mail carrier, at the worst Kevin Costner movies, at the fact that I always look at the clock when it is 4:44, either in the morning nor in the afternoon.

I am an indiscriminate cry, cry, baby.

"You are a stinky, stupid, poopy head!"

I am. I am a stinky, stupid, poopy head. I should shower more, shave more, though I was unaware and unsure that there was actual poopy on my head.

"You are stupid. Nobody likes you!"

I am stupid, and no one likes me. though, at the time, that one cut too close to the bone for my taste. Thomas knows that I am alone, that I have no friends anymore, beyond the pup that tolerates me based only on a shared history and kibble, but does he really know how stupid I am?

And what judge is Thomas of intelligence? What get-the-straw-into-the-juice-box testing of IQ are we doing now?

Thomas is four, and Thomas is the child of my neighbors, though on alternating days I think that he was directly spawned from either Heaven or from Hell.

That first circle, the one that is nothing more than Limbo, according to Dante, so by my reckoning it's that point in your life where you get a plane ticket that has you boarding just after First Class, Military Personnel, and the Handicapped... though the three are not mutually exclusive.

Third Circle, according to Dante, is Gluttony. that 'great storm of putrefaction', free drinks, free food, and extra leg room.

See? Juice Box smart.

When We moved into the house next door I wanted to dub him, 'Thomas Aquinas', but then he proved to be more battering ram than a philosopher, smarter than a thinker, though his head is always tilted and he gesticulates like an elderly Italian shopkeeper when he talks. My Love once bought him one of those sets of false mustaches that he could stick to his upper lip. Sometimes he looked like Chaplin, sometimes he looked like Stalin, but he would always march, in broken time with himself, up and down the sidewalk, the same sidewalk that My Love had included in the Pirate Treasure map.

has.

Had.

Again, Thomas the Battering Ram is four years old, but he can see things that I no longer can. When my fiance and I moved into the house next door to Thomas the Battering Ram we had a plan in place.

That thing that you do when you make a home with someone. Make a plan. Make a God laugh.

And each morning Thomas the Battering Ram did his best to upend that plan, taking to the side door that I had always wanted to replace and alternating between swift kicks and head butts against the thin Home Depot metal of us all. Sometimes it was a kick and go, and sometimes Thomas would simply stand there, all snot and awkward haircut, bright, seeking brown eyes.

"Can Mr. Pirate come out and play?"

My Love and I Have a plan in place.

Had.

Forgive my tenses.

I have one eye, and I wear an eyepatch, but that is a much longer story for this space, but you have to love the fact that Thomas the Wrecking Ball saw me doing yard work one spring day and was convinced that I was a pirate burying treasure. Then you have to know why I loved my fiance as much as I did, as I do, because she then went to a thrift store, bought a little trunk, packed it with gold chocolate coins and a pirate costume, even including an eyepatch that matched mine. Then My Love crafted a treasure map, going so far as to age it with tea, buried that same treasure in the yard and snuck out in the night to put the map in Thomas' mailbox. My Love climbed the tree in our backyard to hang a Pirate flag, which not only vindicated, yet again, my love for My Love but also proved the salient point that you can find anything on the internet.

How do you get a pirate flag in one day?

How did I not know that My Love could scale a tree like a rabid squirrel?

X marked the spot, and Thomas spent the entire day digging our tiny backyard to shreds because apparently the four-year-old did not yet know what an X meant. I still wonder where Thomas the Battering Ram got the tiny shovel, though I have come up with several theories. Well, one theory really.

"He's funny, stupid, crazy smart," My Love said to me as we watched from the window that I will ever be intent on replacing, "Just like you , except for the 'smart' part, because.."

And this is why I loved My Love, because

She had wit and wisdom that I will never know.

Had Loved. Love.

But her wit can be Scottish wit learned from her grandmother, and that is not wit at all, simply a hard science with truth and whiskey to muddle it all together. Make your Beef Stew with Guinness kind of wit.

"Because, you are as dumb as a box of rocks."

And then she walked out of the room, leaving me to take in a terrestrial terrorist that she had unleashed upon me, upon Our tidy little lawn, the little one one with a map that he couldn’t read and a shovel that he could barely wield.

“But he doesn’t know where ‘X’ marks the spot… How is that smart?” I whispered to the window that I would never replace.

I hold no grudge, especially if you have watched a four-year-old wild a shovel, wipe is brow, gaze at the sky as if there was an answer there, but apparently lawns, no matter how small, the upkeep of same such, are important where we live,

Lived.

As are driveways, which I find wildly bizarre.

Drive

Way

How is it that the place that I park is my Drive Way? I am neither driving, nor is there a 'Way' unless I intend on sitting in my car for 47 minutes, said car still running, and decide to ram said car, a 2011 Honda CRV, through the garage door and effectively put myself out of the misery of losing the one person that I have truly Loved? That I have properly Loved?

That I love. I am struggling with tenses. I struggle with a lot of things now, because you never know how much you don't have to think about until your Love is gone.

Dinner is oh so quiet, that is, if I am forced to eat. I cannot order a pizza, because that is what My Love would do if we were too tired, to cook.

"Quiet, you. Sausage and pepperoni?"

Yes.

That puts me in the Ninth circle of Hell

The First Circle of Hell

The Fifth Circle of Hell

and the Seventh Circle of Hell all at the same time.

and then puts me in the last circle that says, "Ring Around the Rosie."

Someone tell Dante that Hell is that place that you can no longer bring yourself to order a pizza.

I thought about It. That "It" with the capital "I", but I am a terrible coward that has grown to love the pain of loss, as it is all I have left, my brittle, little castle of pain.

Also, taking my own life is apparently an affront to God, because only a God can choose who comes and goes through the gift shop.

So, Fuck You, God, you needy piece of shit. Give me back My Love and I will believe in you, and I will buy a refrigerator magnet to mark the occasion, and we will order a pizza to celebrate the fact. Sausage and Pepperoni, and Extra Cheese.

Father, Son, and The Holy Spirit in thirty minutes or less.

My Love's pup wakes me each day, and there is a question in his deep brown eyes, eyes as bright as Thomas', each morning. "Where is the Good One? Where is Our Love?"

How can something be deep and bright at the same time?

"Leave it," I say aloud, because I have learned of late that, when alone you can have conversations with just about anything. "Please leave it." Please refer to the aforementioned fact that I am a coward and by the Transitive Property I cannot have a forthright conversation with a canine.

Though the toaster and I have had a proper verbal Donnybrook of late. I swear I had set the little fucker to three, but Our, my, home is the scent of burnt toast.

And peanut butter.

Thomas the Wrecking Ball is four, and he is a genius, and he is a battering ram. One day, on a day when My Love was outside in our tiny yard, sitting next to me in chairs that we had found on the curb, with our rescue pup between us, Thomas tore through his beaten path from his home to ours.

Thomas the Battering Ram has a path between the bushes where he has worn the grass into the shape of a smile. Clever little bastard, as it could also be the shape of a frown, depending on where you are standing and how you are looking at it. I look at it from where the holes that he dug in the yard are, the holes where X was supposed to mark the spot. It is still a smile, that path that Thomas the Wrecking Ball has worked with the tiny shoes, and his heavy steps.

The kid can even gesticulate while in mid-run. Imagine that, a grown adult running at full tilt, through a line of bushes, yelling at the top of his lungs, arms and legs waving madly like a broken, possessed windmill, insulting you and declaring love at the same time.

A pint-sized Mussolini.

Thomas reached me, My Love, and our pup in moments, and, as he is known to do, he goes from helter-skelter to motionless.

'I'm going to smell you now" he says, stock still.

And My Love laughed. In that way that you can hear it forever, because imagine a person running up to you, slamming the brakes, and then declaring that they were going to inhale you.

My Love Laughed.

Thomas, the Battering Ram, sniffed my arm first, and he looked up at me, head tilted ever so slightly, and said,

"You smell like a bird"

And then he went to My Love and sniffed her neck, and said, "You smell like a brain."

My Love laughed and I laughed, because she is a brain and I am a bird, and while I had long ago realized that My Love was the brains of this operation, I had long ago lost the knowledge of flight.

She has, my apologies, had a laugh that was as soft as a hummingbird's sigh. It was infuriatingly seductive in the manner in which it hung in the air and then flitted away and was gone.

We laughed because moments earlier our conversation was about getting a hand-job on a Greyhound bus, which neither of us had ever experienced, for obvious reasons and logistical reasons, but it was one of those questions that My Love would ask. Not, "Have you ever been on a Greyhound Bus?"

And, again, now you must see how it was that I fell in love with Her.

Had Loved Her.

Love Her.

We laughed because I smell like a bird , and My Love smells like a Brain, and then Thomas the Wrecking Ball went and hugged our rescue pup, Our Little Love, and said, never breaking his embrace, "You smell like a stinky pot."

"I do", I whispered. I smell like a stinky pot. "Don't blame it on the dog."

And I am filled with joy at this moment, joy that I can look back upon but not rightfully register in the moment , as joy is elusive. I have this spectacular woman and this magnificent dopey beast. One smells like a Brain and the other like a Stinky Pot, and I get to embrace it all, sitting in a tiny yard that has been torn up by a tiny, magnificent monster. "Rumpus", and all of that nonsense, because rumpus means Commotion, and what is Love but Commotion that you welcome into your little world?

My Love is the most beautiful woman that my one wonky eye has ever seen. Our Little Love is... was.. ours. Rescued, as I had been, by Her, and by Him.

Worst fight dog in the history of a cruel game, John Starks tough, two for eighteen, one no show.

But didn't Hobbes opine that life itself was, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

My Love is gone. People drop off food that I will never eat. It's funny, curious, because how long is the expiration date on bringing me food after I have lost the Love of my life. Four days?

A week?

A Month?

A Year?

How many tuna casseroles can the world make?

Also, what is the expiration date on tuna? Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short?’

And yet Thomas still comes by every single day. Kicks his tiny , and fierce velcroed sneakers against the thin Home Deport door, rams his head against the thin Home depot door and wakes me despite the fact that I never want to wake.

I have built in excuses beyond the fact that I have lost My Love. Our Little Love never wants to wake, unless he needs to take a shit, and I adhere to this remarkably brilliant philosophy, because, after losing the one that you Love, what reason is there to rise up from your own mortal comforter than to disgorge yourself of what little you ate the evening before? Those things in the back of the freezer that are hiding behind a stack of tuna casseroles?

Thomas is Thunder.

And The Thunder knows that I am always there, just as actual Thunder knows that you are always there, or cares not if you are there or not, and will make itself known, regardless.

"Mr. Pirate, can you come out and play?"

I am Awake. I can come out and play, though there is sixty-seven percent of my body that is heavy in the soul and reluctant that fights me from getting off the floor. I haven’t been able to sleep in a bed., and I have found the floor of the bedroom to have a miraculous embrace. The pup, Our Little Love, gets the bed, and I accept the floor, with all of its straight lines and eagerness to be slept upon and not walked upon.

I have to leave the Pup, because the Pup now has sadness of his own, because he sees me as I am, just as My Love did, but I can play. Sometimes it is a Nerf pistol fight, and other times it is with a race up the driveway, both of which I always lose, or a ridiculous one-one-one football match. Either way, I fall a lot., and I lose to Thomas The Wrecking Ball, Thomas The Battering Ram , Thomas Born of Both Heaven and Hell, “You are a stupid, stinky, poopy head.”

And I am. I am a stupid, stinky, poopy head.

One wonky eye, one leg that drags like a murmur, one arm that hangs hard against my body like a wet hangman’s noose, and a heart that is so sodden with grief that it would make a feast for all of you.

Were you to feast on grief.

Fall comes, and Thomas the Unknowing Emotional Terrorist plods his way across his upside down smile through the yard that was Ours, and finds me by a fire that I have built, which is a funny thing, because it is early in the morning, and I should not have a fire, in this neighborhood, with my tiny yard, so early in the morning, and Thomas the Terrible should not be awake.

“Why do you like Fire so much?” Thomas The Battering Ram asks.

“Because I am dumb as a box of rocks, Kiddo. Never forget that.”

And at four years old, tiny little Thomas Stalin says to me, launching a verse over my broken heart, “I will never forget how stupid you are, stinky poopy head .

“But I want to smell you again’

And Thomas does. My wrist.

“You smell sad.”

I do. I can smell it as well. I can smell it when I walk, when I make it to the store, which I only do when my sorrow begs for a change of venue. I reek of despair when I am in the car that was Hers’, when I am with the dog that was Ours, when I am in the shittter staring at the roll of toilet paper that she would always replace with the roll ascending rather than descending, which we all know is a crime against humanity. I can smell my sadness even when I am in the shower, where I have forgotten how to use soap. I can smell it when I breathe. I smell like a Cry, Cry, Baby, though there was a time when I was halfway decent company over a meal of a small salad.

That is what My Love would say, “I am just going to make myself a small salad,” and she would return with a bowl that would make the horn of plenty blush.

Now I weep at insurance commercials, birds that pay no mind to me, terrible Kevin Costner movies, and I am, Terrible Cry, Cry Baby.

Then Thomas the Trainwreck tilts his little lopsided head, puts a mittened hand on my shoulder and says, ‘You stay here, Mr. Pirate.”

Thomas the Magnificent returns, again carving that path through the upside down frown in the little yard that was Ours, and Thomas is bearing a gift.

“For you, Stupid Head.” He says, pushing the most magnificent gift into my cold hands.

I am not even certain what it is. It looks like a a mini hot air balloon white board with a sad pen hating in a canopy with an eraser.

Scrawled over the top, in handwriting that would lead you to call the police, it says,

“You Got This” With Thomas the Magnificent’s handwriting, it actually reads as “You Got TITS”.

Which I do not have.

These things that I do know, beyond the, ‘I do not have tits’, and these are the Tenants of Thomas.

I am a Cry, Cry Baby.

I am a stinky, poopy head.

I am stupid, and nobody likes me. Dumb as a box of rocks.

I smell like a bird. My Love smelled like a brain. Our pup smells like a Stinky Pot.

I am a pirate without a ship. Without a map.

That I have Loved. Deeply, Madly, in a Furious Calm, in a pretty box that includes making dinner, then watching old episodes of Law and Order SVU and then making love. No adjectives required.

My Love, when I wake you are the the first thought that I have., and when you think of me, wherever I may join you, please remember that, ‘You Got Tits.” So says Thomas the Terrible, The Wrecking Ball, The Battering Ram.

With undying Love and Affection.

And a salad that is trifling, and trivial. Small

The Bird.