songbirds Q Now that we know about waterbirds, what about songbirds? 050408 ... ovenbird When I was twenty-three and so awake inside the terror of being lost, James introduced me to Bernard Fanning. In my small dorm room with the screenless windows that let in the mosquitos and the oily scent of cedar and the breath of orcas swimming in the Pacific I listened to Tea and Sympathy over and over: “If you let somebody love you just enough You’d have everything you need to break Free from all your pain. Songbird You got tales to tell How many times can you describe Your livin’ hell?” On my way to the dining hall for dinner I would find James waiting for me in the shadows, stepping out from behind a thick beam to startle a smile mixed with fear from my lips. James was hard stone with veins of tourmaline—darkness swirled in him like squid ink in the ocean. He was entrancing and charismatic and, a small voice tried to say, not safe. Not safe at all. There was venom inside him. There was a vampiric hunger. But there was also a loneliness that I wanted to assuage, because I was lonely too, and also dark, in my own way. Dark in the way the melancholy poets of old were dark, weighted with sadness every day of my life. It’s possible I was in love with him, but also wary. He circled me and I couldn’t tell if it was out of curiosity or predatory intent. There’s a picture of us sitting beside each other at a gala looking distinctly gothic—me in red and him in black, him a raven and me a bleeding heart, both of us leaking music from the corners of our eyes. James was studying music composition. I was studying literature. We might have made a good song writing team, but we never made anything together. We were never anything together. I sought him out against my better judgement, drawn in by his magnetism. He sang the most alluring songs, vibrations winding through the membrane of the syrinx I wanted to locate with my fingers. When I met someone else, someone who became something to me, and we played together at an open mic, James fixed his eyes on me, eyes that seemed to be nothing but pupil, and tried to possess me with his gaze. I don’t know what happened to him then. We lost touch. And many years later I learned that the darkness consumed him and he was gone from this world. In the aftermath of his funeral announcement there were the usual declarations of his positive attributes, but there were also, more quietly, acknowledgments of his damaged soul, of the terrible things he had done to women who weren’t me, but might have been. I don’t know what hell resided in his heart, but we came into each other’s orbit, and left without getting what we needed, or wanted, or desired. Songbird, you had tales to tell. Tales the world will never know, songs the world will never hear. Maybe you were a vulture, menacing and starving, but I saw a beauty in you too. You gave me your copy of Tea and Sympathy, and when I listen to it I think of you, and I wish that someone could have loved you enough to free you. I wish you had loved yourself enough to be redeemed. 260516 what's it to you? who go blather from