Love, Lose, And Repeat

Wounded Bird

        I tried to shoot a bird with my BB gun the first day I had it. My mama told daddy a BB gun was not a goddamned gift to give a ten-year-old girl.

        I sat on a tire in the middle of the yellow grass, dirt spit up on already off-white tennis shoes. The sun was setting and slipping down under the row of trailers next to me. Up in a leafless tree, were three birds loudly chirping in their nest. I could tell from their frantic feather's flapping that the mama and daddy birds were yelling at each other. The red speckled birds didn't fight like my mama and daddy. There were no bruises hid with long sleeved plaid or black eyes smeared with make-up. The baby sat in her nest listening and watching and I could hear mine inside too.

        "Fuck it, Helen. Fuck you, I’m going out.

        "I'm not surprised anymore. You think I'm scared? "

        Mama's voice trailed farther then closer when she walked from one side of the rusted-red trailer to the other. I looked at the BB gun next to me and took it up in my hands.

       "If you go Dwayne, I'll pack up. I'll go to my mother's"

        "And I'll go get laid." Daddy said.

        The screen door bounced shut against the wood floor. I took aim at the nest with trembling fingers. The chirping in the nest grew louder, and the baby was flapping her wings. I stood heavy and shot once with one eye shut.

        The BB exploded from the chamber and echoed in my ears with splintered screams, remembered arguments, and violent imprints on flesh that I harvested in my head. I hoped I hit it, because if I hit it, I ended it.

        Mama leaned out the window in her stained slip. Her yellow fingers clutched the last bit of ash from the cigarette between her blistered lips, Get inside. She said behind the screeching of tires squealing off behind the trailer. She closed her eyes again and sucked the last bit of breath from the cigarette in her hand.

        "I'll find a match to light your candles." She said.

        I looked at the leafless tree with bare branches, weak roots shifted and moved a little more to the left each Summer. In a few years maybe it would be down, smashing the car that parked under it. Nothing would inhabit it then but loose tar, coughing into down branches.

        The chirping stopped. I looked up, no gunshot. The birds flew to another nest together and found another place to fight.