bird

My wires are getting crossed. Yesterday when I was doing the dishes I threw the silverware across the kitchen floor. Then I stood there in the exaggerated silence that fills a space after a loud noise. "Well," I said aloud, half laughing, my hand against my forehead, "that really accomplished a lot."

This past week, it seems as if there have been two of me sharing one shape. There's the person who throws the spoons and the person who picks them up, rewashes them, and then suggests gently that I go for a walk.

I feel like the bird that hits the window. But I'm also the kid who stoops down and gathers the bird, puts it in a shoe box, tries to talk to it.  How can I be both of those things? How is it that I can sit back and scratch my head, wondering why I feel so angry and overwhelmed, but I can't fix it?

How is it that after five years I haven't run out of bird metaphors?

The things that are supposed to cause me enjoyment are not causing me any enjoyment. I am trying to figure out why. I am trying to figure out why I wake up every morning gasping for breath. I feel like a fish with a baffled, wide open mouth.

There are certain things that I want to go away.  They are good things and I want them to go away. Invitations and opportunities anybody would be lucky to have are turning me into a ball of chattering anxiety.

I'm afraid of saying this out loud because of what it might open me up to, if somebody will call me out for being ungrateful or entitled or spoiled. Maybe. Maybe not. I'm in Chicago now, suspended between Seattle and Asheville, feeling like the fish and the bird.

Hoping my flight will not be delayed forever, trying to figure it out.

***

This past week we lit the first of the summer's bonfires. Salt air and smoke always makes me feel better. I've spent so much time on the beach lately I wonder if I'm slowly becoming frosted, like sea glass.

Maybe a few more cobalt evenings of salt and smoke and I'll be untwisted, I'll be done abusing birds with literary techniques, or abusing literary techniques with birds, whichever way it goes.