2.6.26

Sitting on the sand at my favorite beach in the world, Montaña de Oro, with Star, watching the sun dip into the sea. The waves sizzle like stellar currents as they move back and forth over the shore. Yesterday we drove out to Antelope Valley to watch wildflowers. The entire valley was vacant. I miss the antelopes, I said. Later I read that they had been extirpated from the area since 1900. At night we met up with Fi and walked to the L.A. river, ducked under a fence, and sat under the moon. The night was vast and thin, quiet except for a man who drove his puttering dirt bike back and forth over a nearby pedestrian bridge. Fi opened her bag and revealed tea and teacups, chamomile and moringa, and a bowl of cut apples, blackberries, and cookies. I finished my tea quickly and noticed a small dead spider at the bottom of the cup. I asked Star and Fi what they thought it meant. Before we left Fi presented us each with a stick of incense. Mine was for Amitābha, the Buddha of infinite light. A curious siamese cat hung around us as we said goodbye. Star and I walked to the car and I picked kale from a sidewalk garden, I had no money and I was hungry for the earth. The next morning we left town early and drove north along the sea. The incense had crumbled into pieces in my purse. I burned them on the beach.

the crows

Thousands of crows, crows from all over, gathered after the weather event to strategize. During the night there had been a terrible storm, and when I awoke the sound of rushing winds had been replaced by a different kind of ominous call. I opened my curtains as I did every morning immediately upon waking and saw them, oily black covering every roof, lawn, fence, and power line.

Often when I see an animal, I wonder what it is a sign of. I wondered this now. If this was a symbol, it must be an oceanic one. They spoke to each other all at once, in complex tongues I was too simple to understand. All night I had tumbled through violent, sexual dreams. I awoke multiple times with my fists grasping the headboard, as if in sleep I was afraid of being carried away with the winds that threatened my thin walls.

I picked up my phone and took a photo of the scene. I thought about sending it to someone then remembered I knew no one. How long had I been in this room now? There was no way of being sure. My phone contained no numbers, no texts. I had spent many months, maybe a year, looking out this window, a lone creature in a glass enclosure, occasionally catching glimpses of life outside. Elsewhere life pressed on, but in this room I had barricaded myself so fully inside that even time didn’t dare pass through it.

When I had told Sapphire to leave that day, what I really meant was, if I lose you I will die. She took a long, slow sip of her coffee while gazing out at the passing clouds, then without another word, placed it down on the sill, picked up her jacket, and followed them. There the mug sat, in the exact place she had left it. The coffee had long since evaporated, leaving a sooty film. That residue was the only evidence she had been real. 

I laid back down on the bed now, as I did the day she left. I had laid for a very long time and waited. Today I watched the birds. Their complex web of relationships. I imagined a party with everyone I had ever known in attendance. Sometimes I had dreams like this. All day the black sea outside undulated. The tide never turned. It continued on into the night.

That night in sleep I saw Sapphire’s face gleaming in too-bright sun. I awoke to the sound of my phone, light pressing through the edges of my curtains. I rarely received calls anymore, and when I did, I didn’t pick up. Disoriented from the dream's haze I answered. Sapphire had been in an accident last night. She was dead.

I stood slowly and opened my curtains as I did every morning. The crows were gone. Not a single black feather remained. The entire world outside seemed strangely silent. And the sky—like an eye without an iris. Never in my life had I seen a sky as empty as that one.