It’s been raining all week. It started the moment we left the clinic. A dour space filled with harsh white light, sterile art, and suffocating walls; more a near death experience than a place. With its disaffected doctors, speaking in a language somehow similar to Fortran. With its faceless nurses, appearing as sudden apparitions, anxious; their music, a descending waltz unraveling.

By now we are familiar with every shade of gray; two destitute outsiders trying to salvage a rich interior world. Losing – it feels like we are losing, again.

The act of definition becomes the act of dissolution.

She’s been silent all week, resigned to the bedroom. Last night she woke me up, I was reluctant to relinquish the dream; she told me her body felt like a moribund garden, one where every stem was severed, every root forcibly torn from the soil, every blossom bruised and sheared, trampled back down into the earth. She couldn’t hold her eyes still, or her voice, as she told me this. I tried to hold her; she slapped me away, unable to cry – she closed her eyes, turned over and fell back to sleep; fitful with fire.

She wasn’t in the bed beside me, when I awoke this morning. At first I was frightened, there was some blood on the sheets, I realized it was hers, remembered it was a common symptom listed on the recovery checklist; I felt an uncertain sense of relief.

I found her on the sun porch with the parrots. The birds seemed to be painted into the scene with her. She had put on a diaphanous house dress, over nothing but her skin. It was unbuttoned in the front, exposing her swollen breasts and budding nipples – it wasn’t milk mixed with honey, rather heavy cream softly whipped with wild strawberries.

She had carved open a cantaloupe, was hand feeding small pieces to the birds; larger pieces, flesh salted, to herself. As the rain lashed the window, I saw an inkling of a smile, an incandescent curl, start and then stop, start and then stop, again. It was just enough, I knew her face needed it, I did too.

Not wanting to disturb the peace of that scene, I put on my slicker and pussyfooted past her and the parrots. Stepped out into the garden, she didn’t even see me go.

I found a fallen robin, dead at the foot of the steps. Face up, fiery breast up but not rising, eyes still with a sky bound stare. She was all alone, down there on the saturated ground, rain trying to obliterate all trace of her. I knew this could happen when spring comes prematurely, only to have her vibrancy voided by a dulling flash of frost. I thought about that sensation of falling, something I had known only in dreams. In deep, myoclonic twitch. I thought about the little bird, was that sensation strange to her too? The abject panic of wings not working, the bird severed from the sky, forever.

My thoughts often fall prey to beasts.

I left our garden, carrying the robin, walked out to the wood. I picked a quiet, restful spot, buried the bird there, marked the grave with a light gray stone. I picked a good handful of lingonberries, and then made my way back to the house, the rain finally abating.

She was still there, warm and pretty, on the sun porch with the parrots. For a pregnant second, which felt like a golden lazy hour, I watched her through the wide window, paneless, was taken by that gentle scene. She would make a good mother when the time was right, when she was ready.

I took the berries over to the hose and rinsed them. I left the water running, didn’t turn it off, until my hands felt clean.