I cupped its body, walking to my garage. I placed it down on the concrete grounding, the spidering cracks in the floor supporting the makeshift paper towel bed. Stiffness crept up the small figure, its talons tensing, its wings stilling, its breath tightening. I ran inside, searching for anything to counteract the all-consuming, three-beat quiet. Instead, I found my mom. I led her outside to my rapidly dissipating being. There, we were met with an empty white paper towel. Left behind was only the riddling of three blood drops. One, two, three.
“What if no one ever wants to know me?” One dreary night in March, I found myself in our college apartment facing the musings of my roommate in the midst of a global pandemic. The dim glow of fairy lights dotted our walls, with an ugly, black leather couch pressed against the wall. An old TV sat across from the black couch, with a wooden table dividing the cramped walkway. “No one wants to get to know you?” I laughed. It was a weird dismissal that felt more comfortable than searching for the words I didn’t have. I glanced over at her, hidden in our sunken, yellowed armchair. Her wiry arms shot up in exasperation, her head falling back. Wren was like a fawn, her slender neck extending gracefully into her jawline. Her iron eyes overwhelmed, always distant, always edging the cusp of wandering too far. She locked eyes with me. I wonder what she saw. My mundane, black eyes had a tendency of losing everyone that peered in. Quickly, a remote expression paralyzed her face. “Aren’t you scared? No one ever knowing you?” she questioned. My response was instant, the words quickly shot up my throat, a reckless, violent cannon of ideas now encircling our silence. “Sometimes there’s just nothing to know.” For a month, I found myself mourning the words I didn’t have. Our three-room apartment closed us in, with only our shared bedrooms and a living room to migrate to and from. Quarantine for COVID-19 seemed to dig in its heels, further entrenching us
into a familiar lull of isolation. Everyday seemed to follow an odd regimen: wake up, shower, study, homework, quiet, then sleep. Our apartment was generally home to noise. Online lectures pervaded our everyday, pans rang while cooking on our gas stove, and the conversations of our roommates and friends echoed off our walls. Yet, it was in our moments of quiet where we created space for ourselves, for variance, for wandering. We spent these moments together, finding ourselves on our couch, wine warming our bellies as we strung words into memories. “I hate men,” Wren said one Saturday. I looked over, a grin breaking into my face. “Yea? Me, too. Guys fucking suck.” She sighed through wine-washed teeth, her face illuminated by the dull glow of a phone screen. She stopped scrolling abruptly and turned her phone towards me. “Look.” Her slowed, drunken breath glazed the air as she awaited my assessment. I scanned the photo, which showed only a chest. Olive-toned skin stretched over sharp collarbones, from which a strong neck shot upward. It was Wren. Only, the olive skin of her neck was dotted purple, dots multiplying into splatters of blues and purple bruising her chest.
E L
SI
One, two, three. Silence. One, two, three. For three seconds, the world wound itself around the breaths of a dying fowl. The violent upheaval of its chest continued like clockwork, sporadically devouring its three seconds, only to lull to the silence shortly after. Stillness passed, only for the bird to once more be consumed by its desperate will to continue. One, two, three. Its black eyes were hollowed with irremediability. Up, down, shaky breath, silence. One, two, three. Nothing. Lumpy, matted clumps of feathers pointed to a gash on its chest. Claw marks. The frail body lay astrew, its wing disheveled, its torso blood ridden. I wrapped the bird in a small paper towel, blood slick like oil staining my fingers. For an instant, I felt the weak flit of its wings against my palm. Once more, and then its body collapsed into silence. My fingers became host to a periodic fight against breath, a one, two, three. The small figure lent me its warmth, my hands tingling with the sensation of energy fighting its own cessation.
“What asked.
happened?”
I
She looked back. “I don’t remember. Men happened.” My eyes scoured hers. Her green iron eyes glinted with hurt only for a moment, only to be replaced with a keen cognizance of my examination moments later. Her palms rested on her ribs, her hands clutched around her body. “Are you okay?” I asked, my words far and unreaching. She continued scrolling aimlessly through her phone, my question fizzling into the silence.
