On Identifying Homebirds
- Jun 28, 2024
- 4 min read
by Aubri Kaufman
The bird is back again. I haven’t seen it in a while. No one has. The town Facebook group started a thread about it. Someone laments over its absence. Someone notes that it’s basically the town mascot. Wonders where it could’ve gone. Hopes it isn’t dead. Someone else says it snapped at her dog once, so good riddance. Someone questions whether it’s a crane or a heron. Whether it’s maybe gone south for the winter.
I don’t know if cranes or herons go south for the winter. I don’t know why this one comes here at all.
The mill isn’t operational anymore. The river still flows, of course, and the wheel still turns, but nothing comes of it. An overpass slices the river into another realm. Beyond it, the basin rests motionless, adorned with fallen leaves, regardless of season. Yellow strings of pollen hang immobilized in the surface tension. From the right angle, you can see both worlds: the sun-drenched-wide-open river above the weir, and the shadowed basin below the tree canopy. Warmth and coolness. Movement and stagnation.
The crane-heron straddles them. It sits just below the weir — that division line, a butter churn for debris. I watch a Drumstick wrapper ping pong down the slope. The bird is ankle deep in turbulent water. I move to sit alongside it on a decorative bridge from a before time, back when the mill worked.
“You’re back,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say.
“I am,” the crane-thing returns.
I didn’t want the bird to come back. We both know it. I don’t want the bird to know, but it does. I know it does. I feel bad.
“Where were you?” I ask, without meeting its eyes. I don’t think I could stomach looking into them.
The crane says nothing. Cocks its head in a way that makes me wonder if it’s a heron, after all. The movement is so avian it makes my heart ache. I consider the Coke can floating by.
“The trash bothers you,” the bird more tells than asks. I don’t want to answer it. Mostly because I don’t know how to answer. I don’t want to insult it. I think it lives here, during the summers at least. I don’t want to lie to it either. I actually don’t know if I can lie to it. I think it’d know. I don’t say anything. I shrug, flip a small rock into the water. It sinks slower than I thought it would.
The bird asks why it’s all so hard for me. I don’t know exactly what it’s asking, but I can feel the tears welling. For some reason, I’m reminded of late August, a few years ago. The time I let ladybugs swarm all over me, let them crawl up my arms and legs, thrilled with all the luck, to later discover they were actually an invasive species of beetle that masquerades as ladybugs. I felt sick after, though no damage was done. I simply trusted myself less to know the difference between two things that look the same. I’m still staring at the rock, blending with the others at the bottom now, like it was always there. Like it wasn’t just in my palm.
“I see the way you are with other birds.” The delivery is so calm, so gentle, I wonder if it’s a heron again.
I’m afraid of you because I don’t know what you are. I don’t know when you’re coming or going. I don’t know how long you’ll be gone for. I don’t know why you come back. I’m afraid of you because you’re unpredictable. I don’t know why you don’t mind the trash. Why you want to live here with it. I don’t know why I hate that so much. I don’t know why I hate you. I don’t know why I can’t love you and I hate myself for it.
I think. And I say none of it.
I don’t tell it that I look for it when it’s gone. That maybe I do love it, and that’s what makes it all so hard. That sometimes I stand on the bank, blatantly searching. That sometimes it’s just an embarrassed glance, and then I hurry into the nearby record shop or the palm reader, not needing anything from either.
I want to know you, too, I hear from the bird. When I meet its eyes, they’re like two smooth stones at the bottom of the river basin. I reach out instinctively and touch a wing feather. It’s coarser than I thought it’d be. For protection, it tells me, and I understand.
The bird shifts closer, and for the first time, I don’t move away. Someday I will ask it what I can do for it. How I can make its home nicer. Ask if it wants me to clean up the trash or leave it. I’ll tell the bird its feathers are beautiful. I’ll tell the bird I know it’s not its fault, I just don’t know who else to blame. I’ll tell the bird I don’t actually care what it is, it belongs here, just like the crows and the cardinals and the other birds I can identify more easily. For now, we sit together and watch the wheel turn.
Aubri Kaufman is a writer and a therapist from New Jersey. She is the co-founder and co-EIC of Icebreakers Lit. Her work can be found in Pithead Chapel, Pidgeonholes, HAD, Rejection Letters, and elsewhere. She wants to talk to you on Twitter — @aubrirose.
