I’m dreaming about birds again.
I wish they would go away already. I’m tired of thinking about them, hoping for them. Birds, birds, birds—why won’t they go away? I shake my head as if to clear it, but feel my mistake at once. My mind is still dense and foggy, swimming in confusion. I blink open my eyes slowly, tentatively, but no matter how far I force them open, I can’t seem to take in any light. It takes me too long to understand that I’ve awoken in the middle of the night.
A sharp gasp.
That’s me, my voice, my breath, my quickly beating heart. Where is my head? Why is it so heavy? My eyes close fast, sand stuck in the lashes, sticking them together. I try to clear the haze—try to remember—but parts of me still feel numb, like my teeth and toes and the spaces between my ribs and I laugh, suddenly, and I don’t know why—
I was shot.
My eyes fly open, my skin breaking into a sudden, cold sweat.
Oh my God I was shot, I was shot I was shot
I try to sit up and can’t. I feel so heavy, so heavy with blood and bone and suddenly I’m freezing, my skin is cold rubber and clammy against the metal table I’m sticking to and all at once
I want to cry
all at once I’m back in the asylum, the cold and the metal and the pain and the delirium all confusing me and then I’m weeping, silently, hot tears warming my cheeks and I can’t speak but I’m scared and I hear them, I hear them
the others
screaming
Flesh and bone breaking in the night, hushed, muffled voices—suppressed shouts—cellmates I’d never see—
Who were they? I wonder.
I haven’t thought about them in so long. What happened to them. Where they came from. Who did I leave behind?
My eyes are sealed shut, my lips parted in quiet terror. I haven’t been haunted like this in so long so long so long
It’s the drugs, I think. There was poison in those bullets.
Is that why I can see the birds?
I smile. Giggle. Count them. Not just the white ones, white with streaks of gold like crowns atop their heads, but blue ones and black ones and yellow birds, too. I see them when I close my eyes but I saw them today, too, on the beach and they looked so real, so real
Why?
Why would someone try to kill me?
Another sudden jolt to my senses and I’m more alert, more myself, panic clearing the poison for a single moment of clarity and I’m able to push myself up, onto my elbows, head spinning, eyes wild as they scan the darkness and I’m just about to lie back down, exhausted, when I see something—
“Are you awake?”
I inhale sharply, confused, trying to make sense of the sounds. The words are warped like I’m hearing them underwater and I swim toward them, trying, trying, my chin falling against my chest as I lose the battle.
“Did you see anything today?” the voice says to me. “Anything . . . strange?”
“Who—where, where are you—” I say, reaching blindly into the dark, eyes only half open now. I feel resistance and wrap my fingers around it. A hand? A strange hand. It’s a mix of metal and flesh, a fist with a sharp edge of steel.
I don’t like it.
I let go.
“Did you see anything today?” it says again.
I mumble.
“What did you see?” it says.
And I laugh, remembering. I could hear them—hear their caw caws as they flew far above the water, could hear their little feet walking along the sand. There were so many of them. Wings and feathers, sharp beaks and talons.
So much motion.
“What did you see—?” the voice demands again, and it makes me feel strange.
“I’m cold,” I say, and lie down again. “Why is it so cold?”
A brief silence. A rustle of movement. I feel a heavy blanket drape over the simple sheet already covering my body.
“You should know,” the voice says to me, “that I’m not here to hurt you.”
“I know,” I say, though I don’t understand why I’ve said it.
“But the people you trust are lying to you,” the voice is saying. “And the other supreme commanders only want to kill you.”
I smile wide, remembering the birds. “Hello,” I say.
Someone sighs.
“I’ll see you in the morning. We’ll talk another time,” the voice says. “When you’re feeling better.”
I’m so warm now, warm and tired and drowning again in strange dreams and distorted memories. I feel like I’m swimming in quicksand and the harder I pull away, the more quickly I am devoured and all I can think is
here
in the dark, dusty corners of my mind
I feel a strange relief.
I am always welcome here
in my loneliness, in my sadness
in this abyss, there is a rhythm I remember. The steady drop of tears, the temptation to retreat, the shadow of my past
the life I choose to forget has not
will never
ever
forget me