Whippoorwill Calls: The Saddest Bird
Whippoorwills mean summer. Sad and sweet, their forlorn calls have always reminded me of languishing warm days and funerals. And summer. Sunsets and trees and light through the leaves mean summer summer summer. Summer means no-hurry places to be, and dripping watermelon and people and friends and being able to smile without the weight of things left to do. But this time, the weight of you not being next to me squeezes the space between my bones like metal machinery packing me into a can. (Without you, I feel so utterly insignificant I might as well fit inside a can of soup.) It’s like I don’t know how to be without you. Summer isn’t supposed to smell like dread and loneliness. It’s supposed to feel like hope, sticking to the skin and thickening the air. Instead, hope flicks around my eyes like gnats, annoyingly constant. It’s easier just not to look now, to let myself revel in the shards of hope poking into my skin instead of opening my eyes and coming to terms with the fact that it isn’t you. Not on my phone, not in my arms, not anywhere. (I’m glad your eyes aren’t green. I wouldn’t be able to look at the leaves without mentally searching for the one hit by the sun just right—the one that matched your eyes. Really glad.) The remnants of our last kiss refuse to fade into the breeze. My toothpaste tastes like the gum you’d always chew; my toothbrush tastes like your lips. I spit with renewed purpose. Oh darling, how did we end up like this? What happened to our nights that bled into days as we spilled our guts in whispers over the phone? What about our windows-down early morning drives, wind in our hair and laughter plastered on our faces? Things changed, slower than the seasons, so slowly I barely noticed until I woke up four days in a row without a word from you. Was it too late then? When did our heartbeat flatline, when was it too late? Scavenging for air is a feeling I’m used to, but this time it isn’t because we’d been kissing so long we forgot to breathe. I wish I could forget to breathe, now. I wish I could forget you. But that’s basically the same thing.
