We were sitting on the outskirts of the grounds of a large old house. It was the beginning of spring. The water and ice were warming and flowing and dripping. We watched a little bird who kept climbing to the top of an inclined ledge of stone where some ice was melting and riding the water down like a slide. He would land and hop around, content with his little game, then flutter back up for another go.
She asked me if I had ever lived in the city. I told her yeah, but only for a little while, in the winter. I never really gave it a chance. She said she loves it there. She was moving soon. We were both missing limbs. Stubs where an arm or a leg should have been. So sitting and looking out at the thawing forest was uncomfortable. I said I was sure she would love it the- I broke. Those sobs that just come echoing up from inside of you and crash into your head and out of your mouth. The type of crying that’s fear and madness and denial and it holds you up over a broken barren wood, the trees all jagged and sharp points miles below. “I can’t lose you again” I weakly managed to say between heaving breaths and tears. “I know it’s gone but I can’t” I curled my stunted arms and legs up into myself trying to roll up into a ball on my side, the ground cold and hard, some vain hope that she would at least comfort me, see my pain and even though it was over just give me some feeling of the old safety. I knew she felt some of it. She had to feel some form of the loss. But she wouldn’t embrace me this time. She didn’t have the arms to hold me with anyhow.
The little bird took a final little slide, then, seemingly done with his play, glanced around quickly, ruffled himself up self-seriously, and darted off into the sky towards the trees.
The best part about falling into the forest is when you land and are impaled on the broken trees. The pain is sharp and violent and real. But when your arms and legs start to grow back, weak and malformed but strong enough to crawl, and then to walk, you stand up. Caked in drying blood and tired and sore, you look around and the forest rolls off into the distance, as far as you can see. Looking dead and blasted and ruined in every direction. And you have to start walking.
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