We, as human beings, see our lives as narratives. Each one of us is the protagonist in our own novel, filling the pages with villains, lovers, and comrades as we face conflicts in the pursuit of our desires. While other people fill in the classic roles and situations provide the plot, recurrent imagery can even supply themes and metaphors.

A few weeks ago, a bird lay dead on the sidewalk outside of my house.
I was walking to work early in the morning, with the deep earthy scent of my lover still lingering in my nostrils, submerging my head in the clouds.

A dead bird. It's tiny vertebrae mangled on the cold cement. One second it was a happy little bird flittering around, and the next moment is all sidewalk. Wounds can be sudden, unexpected, and final.

Looking at the bird, i next looked at my right thumb and remembered the first night i arrived in seattle, about a week before the bird's conversion to sidewalk. While removing my suitcase from the baggage claim conveyor belt, i ripped open my thumb. i sensed a dull pressure, but had no idea about the injury until i saw the blood. I was in seattle; i was with jared. Silly and sappy as it was, my heart was sliced open pouring nonstop, and my thumb felt like a small site of bloodletting for the existence of pure bliss some benign dignity was granting to me. Jared. Jared jared jared.

Looking at my thumb that day, the cut was gone. The skin had joined itself back together without my permission. I realized that time had passed since i got here; it had been a week already. And that i only had until september. I mourned the passage of time.

Okay, to put in plainly, it was this weird juxtaposition- the killing of the unsuspecting bird and the healing of my unconscious finger. that's what happened. It reminds you of that big topic "THE TRANSITORY NATURE OF LIFE" that is the subject of every haiku ever.
The bird didn't want to die and i didn't want my thumb to heal, but
Sometimes when i abandon my fears in search of "what i want," i feel like a frail bird scrounging on the sidewalk for scraps, knowing that any one vehicle in the stampeding traffic could have my name on it, be seeking me in its tire tread. Squish squish.

Every day i walked and passed the bird, and it grew less. First it festered, overran with birds, looked worse than it did before. I was with jared one time and he saw it and said "ewww." But eventually, even though it died on the horrible surface of concrete, it returned to the earth. Through wind and scanvegers and bug's bellied, it found its home. Now there are no remains.
I thought about the bird and how things die, yet how it is all taken care of. And once something is dead, it is dead. Something new can spring forth.

Then, last night jared and i were walking to a concert near "CAFE VIT
WHERE WE CAN MEET K AND GET SOME COFF." We looked at the sidewalk and saw a small dead bird. A frail bird, scrounging on the sidewalk for scraps, knowing that any one of the members of oncoming traffic could be coming to take them to the other side. That bird. My heart? Is it too cheesy to make a correlation? How about it being all of us, all of our searching for something, a search where the smallest find would mean everything.

Love,
Caitlin
Ps - what?