All things in cycles. I’ve loved this love and mourned this loss—in a dream, yesterday, last year, some other life. I’ve felt this before—and before and before.
I swear I’ve been here—inthe heady fog of this morning, in the worn trench of this bed, under these streetlights. I’ve paced this hospital floor and stood at this funeral.
Do you feel the cycle moving? If you stand so, so still—do you feel the ebb of the tide? The easy pull of it. The gentle reminder:
Last spring, a robin built a nest over our garage. My wife burst into the house to tell me the news. Go get a ladder, she told me. You can’t bother them, I reminded her. I’m not going to bother them, she said. I’m going to put up a camera.
And she did. She took our little security camera and carefully positioned it so that she could monitor the neat little clutch of blue eggs already present.
Every morning, the robin would be tightly nestled over the eggs, and every morning, my wife would say good morning, Robin as she walked to her car. I tried to resist this, because it felt silly. But the robin, all squashed into her nest, would watch me with her dark, suspicious eyes and I didn’t want her to be afraid. And so one day, I started saying it, too.
Good morning, Robin.
Throughout the day, my wife would send me stills captured from the camera. Any day now, she would caption them excitedly.
And one day they did—they hatched. And I watched the video from my phone, fully captivated by this thing, this process that was so ordinary, so unremarkable, so completely un-unique—how many robins are hatched every spring? And yet, I couldn’t look away. Couldn’t help but feel that there was privilege in bearing witness to it. Couldn’t help but feel that this was, in fact, entirely remarkable.
We watched as they went from raw, squirming little things to patchy grey puffs, then fat, feathered little sons and daughters and then—one day they were gone. My wife cried, but insisted they were bittersweet tears—all things come, all things must go. An empty nest is a success—our Robin had done an excellent job.
It’s one of my favorite memories with my wife, the Spring with the Robins. And as I think of it this morning, I can’t help but also think—how bizarre, that there are folks, like my own parents, who think my marriage is an abomination. That it ought to be dissolved. To think that there are people working in wood-paneled rooms and marbled halls right now to make it happen.
When all we really want, and have ever wanted, is our Spring with the Robins. And what’s so wrong with that?
I love you, Appalachia. My blood is in your red clay soil. All my bones, too. Mothers and fathers and all the sins of generations—buried and held and growing things new again.
The people here, they want to spit me out. Like we ain’t made of the same gravel and grit and vinegar piss—but there’s queers in these hills.
Always has been.
These mountains have broke my bones, same as they’ve done yours—and I ain’t leaving home.
Turn a little deeper into the cotton quilt your mama made in some other lifetime. Blink slow against the dimness, steep deep in the stillness as the night stretches, yawns, gives way to a blessed new morning. You are alive again.
Cold and hungry. Feel the stiffness in your bones. Feel the heavy in your flesh. The tired, the lonely, the longing. But there’s a heart thumping under your ribs—feel it sing, slow and steady, at the sight of sunbeams. Sunbeams, again, like every morning that’s ever been. Sunbeams—new every day to a heart like yours, a heart that says: sunbeams, they’re a goddamn wonder.
Lead with it—that steady little drum of joy. Grab hold and let it pull your feet to the old floorboards. Little heart, pattering out a plea to see the sky—what shade of blue today? The question is as good a reason as any to commit to another day.
Dress in the gray light. Pull on the flannels and linen and denim that will keep the cold at bay. Keep your body safe. You know what’s at stake, kid. You know what it takes—to keep your body safe.
Breathe deep, cough against the rush of the cold—your breath hangs in the air. Little ghosts. Water from the bucket by the window, splashed against your face—close to frozen, stings against your skin. You’re awake. You’re alive.
Pull on leather boots, hope the laces got another day in them. Walk out into the wide world—see the slope of the clearing you made, the way the high grass meets a wall of trees—trees bigger than god, and maybe older, too. They hug in tight around your slice of paradise, your hard-hewn home. They form a cathedral of green—and brown and gold and flashes of deep, dark red. Like old blood, dried in a smear under your heavy, swollen lip after your Pa had finally had enough of you.
There’s a quiet here so deep you can feel it in your bones. Quiet like the moment after the preacher asks for bowed heads, but before he starts praying for hell to swallow all the sinners like you. Quiet like the first girl you ever loved, in that moment after you spilled that soft, silly confession to her—but before that foreign hardness took her face, before the slow panic and repulsion made her a stranger you’d never met. Quiet like that moment when you learned your first lesson in self-preservation: love is for other people. Better people.
It’s a real shame, kid—the way the world kicks around beautiful things.
But you’re alright here, ain’t you? You’re alright. You feed the bleating sheep in their little pasture, and the chickens, too, and you love that there’s life in every inch of this place. The sheep, the sun, the seeds in the ground—they don’t give a shit who you are or what you’ve done. What you look like, what you own. You give to them, they give back. You’re alright here.
You go down to the crick for water, just as the sun starts pouring proper down into your little dip between the hills. You can feel it, warm and easy against the back of your neck. The cold can’t hold you forever. Nothing can hold you forever.
The afternoon brings a visitor—a boy, a horse, an empty cart, trundling up the holler path. You split one more log, let the pieces fall, lean the ax against the same post where you’ve hung your shed coat. The boy hops down from his saddle, raises a hand in greeting.
Brought your saw back.
He lifts the tool in question for you to see.
Pa sends his thanks.
You take the saw, and he dives into his bag to bring out a small parcel wrapped in a bit of an old flour sack.
Cornbread from Mama.
You thank him for returning the saw, and for the cornbread. He’s tall and lean—maybe a little underfed. His shoes are two sizes too small. His coat’s missing a few buttons. A boy still, pushing at the seams of what will come next. His parents can’t keep up.
You ask if they need any firewood. He refuses, says his Pa won’t accept charity. You eye the empty cart his Pa sent along with him.
You tell him he can take whatever he can split—ain’t charity if you’ve sweat for it. By the evening, he has a full cart, and you split the cornbread with him on the porch.
And maybe it’ll all count for something someday. Maybe it’ll all count when hell finally swallows you up.
Before he leaves, he stops there on the creaky old steps, looks back up at you.
Pa says you’re a good, Christian man, sir. He thinks mighty high of ye. Just thought you oughta know.
Maybe it’ll all count, when his Pa has to help put you in the ground someday.
When the evening comes, you retreat inside. Feed the fire, warm the place up. Cold dinner, ‘cause your body’s awful tired, kid. Your mind, too. You dig up a box of tobacco, take a pinch and pack it into a pipe you won in a game of cards—maybe one of the finest items you own. You sit on the porch and watch the last of the burnt bronze evening melt back into the trees. You’re alright here.
Just as the darkness of the night swells up, you see the flicker of a lantern up yonder on the hill—a soft, yellow star moving through the trees.
Could be anyone. Could be the boy, come back for more wood. Or this could be the moment everything unravels. Could be the night they drag you behind a horse, put you in a tree, bury you as someone you’re not.
You aren’t scared, but you’re ready—you fold your fingers around the rifle leaned next to the door and wait for hell to open up and swallow the sinners like you.
A quiet knock.
You open the door.
It’s her. The widow from over the next holler. She stands silent in the doorway, and her dark, tired eyes meet yours. She’s dry as a bone, but in the empty pools of shadow cast by her lantern, you could swear she was a drowning woman.
You let her step inside and you exchange pleasantries, as you always do on these visits. She asks after the book she loaned you—have you been enjoying it? You confess you haven’t had much time for reading. She offers to read a chapter or two aloud for you.
That’d be real nice, ma’am.
But neither of you moves to retrieve the book. Her hands cling to the black linen skirts of her dress, knuckles gone white with it. You can feel the empty, howling grief that came in with her, followed her like a roving spirit. You wish you knew how to help.
She cuts the space between you in half a step and touches her lips to yours. She tastes like tears and uncertainty and so many sleepless, heartsick nights.
It’s not proper. It’s not the way things ought to be. It’s not what either of you imagined, back when you were small and the world told you what your hearts should want. But no one prepares you, do they? For the weight of it all. For the sadness that creeps in between the boards, settles into your chest like a cough you can’t shake. For the way the haints and hurts hollow you out, slow and steady, until you wake up one day feeling like maybe you ain’t even a real person anymore.
You know she’s just lonely. You know she misses her husband and that you ain’t him. Don’t wanna be him. But when she pulls off your clothes, all those layers of the day—when she sinks in against you, meets your skin to hers—you remember, for a moment, that you’re wonderfully, terribly, brilliantly human. And that’s enough.
Later, in the deepest part of the night, she does read to you. Her voice dips and lulls through the bare little room, until you can’t really distinguish the words themselves—all you can hear is low, lush birdsong, and the content thumping of your own heart.
You sleep the sleep of the safe and relieved—heavy, deep sleep—and by the morning—
—the fire’s gone out.
You watch as she dresses silently in the first sunbeams of the day. As she leans in toward your dusty little mirror and pins her hair back into place. Hasty, but careful. She gathers her things, prepares to leave.
She hesitates, turns back to you in your bed. Maybe you could pretend to be asleep, but—you’ve been seen now. There’s no going back.
There’s a long, soundless moment that stretches out in the space between you. She says:
You aren’t a man.
Statement or question or accusation—you can’t be sure what she means. Can’t be sure that it matters. You give no response.
But underneath your mother’s quilt, your hands begin to tremble with fear.
She leans down, kisses your forehead with reverence, the way folks kiss the statues of saints. Or maybe it’s with pity, the way folks woulda kissed the corpses of those saints before they put them in the ground.
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