grief for breakfast

The bird should sing her song right here, in my shed. “I have had enough”, I said. But I finished my portion and did my time. The last spoon of black chickpeas was laced with words for glass shards, but the cumin seed is stuck in between my teeth, somewhere I cannot reach, and I cannot get out of this house that I love so much. The walls are mocking me, there is the chipping paint that is tormenting me—I wait and watch for the next fragment to fall, I almost want to take my own skin off. With every fragment of the chipping paint, I am going to rip off a hangnail. The cement underneath is identical to my weary bones. I cried until my limbs felt weak. That glass of water was not good enough; it was either too cold or too warm, but I drank until my throat felt like sandpaper was rubbing against it. I am still thirsty.

There is this pale undertone of the walls, like that of a sick person’s skin. These yellow walls are way duller than the laburnums outside. The blooms are not like those at the beginning of May; they are mostly on the ground now. The tree has only foliage and a couple of flowers to show. I have sought answers under these and other trees every few months. I wish they could talk back; they must have seen many like me, they must know what all this would lead to. I want to believe in God, and I do believe in God to somehow make sense of this. It always does make sense, lasts for months— The search for God everywhere. Whatever good there is in me, in evening walks with my mother, in the food that my father cooks for me, in thoughtful friends, in plants that come back to life, in birds that trust me just enough to come a bit closer, in bugs trying to survive, in passion, in zeal, in love, in empathy, there must be God somewhere in there. But then, I cannot resuscitate the dead bees in my backyard who died far away from the homes they spent their entire lives building. Is there God in this death, in this grief, in this weight that I carry within me?

The bird can sing her song right here, in my shed, give me something to wake up to every day, a little routine to structure my day around, a little sign to carry on. She can leave when she wants to; nobody is stopping her. She would never feel this way; she would not notice the chipping paint or the cement or God’s existence. She doesn’t cling to the many truths to justify her existence; she doesn’t have to because her simple truth is her survival. It is a freer way of living, I suppose—to just not know anything other than survival. I do not know the things she knows about surviving, so I guess we are equals in a way.

She does sing every morning, just not in the shed. It is somehow just about enough to remind me of her existence and my own.

last july