She held a hummingbird in her hand. It was fragility embodied. The tiny jeweled head was like a cluster of precious gems. The eyes were dark and liquid, flitting back and forth in time with the delicate flutter against her palm that she knew was the beating of the miniscule heart.
She examined the narrow beak curved over the edge of her fist. A blur of motion caught her eye. As she leaned close it resolved into the tiny tip of a tongue flicking in and out, as if sipping nectar from the air.
When she opened her hand she expected an explosion of frantic motion and beating wings, a desperate escape. Instead the creature went still, even its heart seeming to slow. As if terrified by its sudden freedom.
Afterward, she remembered noticing a stain, like blood, on her palm.
—
"Name."
"Pilar?"
"Age."
"Thirty-seven?"
"Occupation."
"I'm an... English Teacher?"
The green tinted light from the monitor flickered on the doctor's lined face. The reflection of the blinking cursor beat a steady rhythm in the lens of his glasses, obscuring then revealing his gray eyes. His questions sounded more like statements, laconic and disinterested, as if reading her instructions for assembling a mannequin. The model of a woman.
"Today's date."
"March seventeenth?"
"And the year."
"Twenty-nineteen?"
She stared down at the hands in her lap, fiddling with her fingers, reflexively stroking the tiny feather tattoo on her thumb. Her answers came out unsure, quavering upward toward a question mark that should not be there, sometimes trailing off to nothing like the gradual stilling of a bleeding heart. To an observer it might be unclear who interviewed whom, were it not for the desk between them; he ensconced in the wings of his leather chair, she perched on the edge of the sagging, worn sofa.
"Family."
"None."
"What about your husband."
"I'm divorced."
That was not a question. That answer she was sure of.
—
She gazed up at the clouds drifting lazily across a graying sky. The sun was lowering toward the horizon and a light breeze stirred the leaves of the oak tree. Its cool shade still shielded her from the fading warmth of the late afternoon sun. Lately the sun scalded her skin. She would become so hot she would feel like all her moisture might just boil away and leave her a shriveled husk, or a pile of powdery, gray ash in the shape of a woman.
She preferred the cloudy days, the dusky hours, hiding inside until the midday heat had passed. She would eschew the stone pathways, instead walking barefoot across the yard to reach the copse of oaks beneath which she preferred to lounge. The grass was uniformly green and trimmed to a perfect length: not so long as to attract snakes, not so short that you lost the delicious springiness that she so loved.
She was relaxing on the soft, manicured lawn under her favorite tree when a glint caught her eye. She lazily turned her head. What appeared to be a tiny flash of light seemed to retreat as she watched, moving swiftly, disappearing then reappearing against the backdrop of white-gray clouds.
Curious, she pushed herself up to a seated position, leaning back on her hands as she stared intently into the cloudy sky, trying to focus; but just as quickly as she had found the glint, she lost it.
