IN CASE I NEVER BECOME ALL THE GOOD I SEE
A soft bird is lying broken on the concrete of my driveway. At first I don’t see it (this is not a choice) but my lover does. The bird’s head is stuck looking upward as it moves wings that won’t take flight. I turn away from the bird. My lover turns toward it (this is a choice). He lifts the bird, “little one,” he calls it (like I have called other creatures before) and holds it in his hands. He delicately searches the white bird’s neck for a fracture, runs his hands over the wings, examines the legs. He can’t find what’s wrong. He says he doesn’t want the bird to suffer. I understand this. I understand but there’s something else. The truth is I’m afraid. I’m afraid to witness such pain and afraid to witness the death that would end suffering. The truth is I’m not like my lover. I can’t find the place in the bird’s neck to snap. I can’t touch it. I can’t look. The truth is my lover would never write this down. He won’t ask himself if it’s right or wrong to look at this bird’s pain and have something to say about it (this is always a choice). The truth is my lover is not stronger than I am. He doesn’t know much about birds or how to let one go peacefully. But he is good. He is the good I’m always trying to be (the good I try to be by telling you all of this— though of this too I’m afraid). I’m trying to hold in tenderness when confronted with the unfathomable (a choice made again every day). Not to explain the unfathomable away but to give it expression. To grant grace to what we experience (human or otherwise) and let it fly. But if I’m unable, I want the world to know of him. The boy turned bird-healer. To see him as I do. As love with the ability to softly stroke a broken thing.
Tervela Georgieva, 24, Utah - USA ✯
“Tervela is an English graduate from a university in the desert. She’s currently trying to figure out what circle of hell she’s in and where to next. She’s trying to get back in touch with what she loves about writing and the artistic process in her own silly little ways.”