Outside the library I see you. Blackbird. On the ground by the tree, the tallest tree looking like you were asleep. I fold you into an A4 sheet and bring you with me. It is a grey dusk. That spectre-bearing winter sky hangs stillborn above us, blackbird and me, while I cycle to Aldi, to buy rapeseed oil. In the front pocket of my rucksack, the queue, your still body and orange beak, your closed eyes and perfect matte feathers. I have to shuffle you, to ruffle you, to get my wallet.
When we get home the dog comes waggedy, she comes to the garden with us. At the scrap of lawn under the skeletal obelisk beyond the back wall I dig a small hole for you. The pylon hums relentlessly, the black bitch smiles at the scattering soil her eyes catching quizzically on four repetitive points, me, you, the hole I’m digging, the kitchen door, repeat.
Her hot breath snatches the smell of the acrid hollytree, it’s cruel little leaves pinching at the rotting fence and grey worn washing. I undo your A4 narrow rule shroud and take you in my cold clammy hands.
I notice now that you’re still a little warm. Your body. I think about your heartbeat. What it would be like to have held you living? It seems so unnatural to pin your wings to hold you near me long enough to feel the hollow thump pattering in your breast under my anxious thumbs. I think about you bursting from my hands to my face from your ether. I think of you flying into me and then away. The violent flash of feathers on each cheek and scratching claws at my nose, my eyes. I think about my own heart beat and the sound of it swells in my ears as I hold your soft stiff body blackbird. I follow the shivers that run through me into the ground and wish I could grow tendrils and stay here and grow and die next to the bitter holly tree. I remind myself to breathe.
I think about your fear blackbird, I wonder how you fell. Your cheeks make you look merry, as though sleepy after a satisfying meal. I think to kiss you once but think again and place you in the ground, in the hole I’ve dug you. I will come back for your bones in the spring. You will be something new to me then. I will make use of them.
Sionnachaí 