6 June

My favorite bird is the Eastern bluebird, or Sialia sialis. I can’t say when or how it became my favorite, but it is. There’s tough competition, too— I’ve counted 14 different native species in the copse of trees across the parking lot, and Kevin switches out the feed every month so we’ve started getting visitors from all over. I love watching them all. I love how intently focused they seem on everything, like being a bird is serious business, and I guess to them it is. I know they don’t notice me watching them, but I like to imagine they do. I imagine they can see me and recognize me like I recognize them. I imagine their songs and dances are a big production they are putting on for me, thanking me for their bird seed, even though it’s Kevin that put the feeders up. Maybe my feathered friends are just grateful to have an audience, someone who can appreciate their song and dance. Maybe they want me to come into their trees and see them up close. I would like to—I would love to, but I can’t. I wish I could let them know that somehow. 

7 June

Eastern bluebirds are easy to identify because of their distinct coloration. The males are orange around the breast, with bright blue wings and heads, the color of sky and Fall leaves. The females are almost the same color, but faded, like they’ve been run through the laundry a few times. The blue is more gray, and the orange is almost brown. Most male birds have brighter feathers to attract mates. They must get very confused when I put on different colored shirts. I read online that their eyes work differently than ours, and they can see colors that we can’t. 

It’s easy to identify Eastern bluebirds by their call, too. They have this short, three-note warbling melody. The notes are different each time, but the same somehow, like variations on a theme, or a scale in different keys. It’s a proclamation in the tone of a question. Here I am! Here I am?

8 June

Dr. Kimbrell says I shouldn’t just write about the things that I like. She said it’s good that it makes me happy, but I shouldn’t be afraid to write down the hard things too. That will help, she says, with my condition. She uses that word like there is something wrong with me. I guess there is. I’m conditional. I don’t know what I can write here that I haven’t already told her in our meetings. I miss my old house. I miss Mom. I hate how when I look out any window that isn’t the one facing the little patch of woods and feeders I see so many buildings and windows looking back at me. I miss going outside and not being a burden. There, don’t I feel better?

10 June

I used to always set an alarm in the morning. Now I sleep with the blinds open. The streetlight in the parking lot is almost at eye-level with our apartment and makes it difficult to get to sleep sometimes, filling my room with a sickly purple light that makes me feel like I am in a hospital again. I have to leave the blinds open, though, so I can wake up with the birds at first light. Most diurnal birds are more vocal in the mornings. I read online that birds begin singing at slightly different times because some are better at perceiving the changes in light. They can see the sun rising sooner. Some birds just make nests higher in the trees. I like to lay in bed and watch the blue dawn chase the purple streetlight away, listening to the choirs singing and shouting at one another, letting everyone know they’ve made it through another night. Calling out, checking in. If I listen closely I can just make out my sialia sialis amidst the chorus, letting me know it is still there. 

15 June

Kevin got a new job. He’s a “courtesy driver” for a dealership in town. He delivers and picks up loaner cars for customers who aren’t able to drive their car. Seems like he really enjoys it. It doesn't pay as much as the warehouse, but there’s less pressure and he gets to be outside all day. He’s going to try and work his way up to sales, which I think he’d be great at. He said he’s white collar now, baby, and ain’t going back. I don’t think he knows what white collar means, but I’m happy for him. People always liked Kevin, more than me. I was the kid brother who came part of a package deal to sleep-overs and cookouts. He never let them make fun of me though, at least not when I was around. It’s good to see him happy again, even if it means we have to live on a tighter budget. I need to do more to help. I’m going to start trying harder to get better.

16 June

I tried going outside again today. I didn’t make it any farther than last time, or the time before.
I look through the peephole and I’m fine. The world is small and contained in a little bubble of glass. Then I open the door and everything is louder and bigger. I feel this buzzing, like someone holding a kitchen timer against my skull. I make it a few steps onto the wooden decking that runs between the apartments, see the concrete below through the cracks in the boards. Anywhere but down and I see metal and glass and people and noise, noise. My heart starts throwing itself against my ribs. Is it how hummingbirds feel all the time? I can remember how to breathe but the air just won’t come. If I could just reach the woods I would be okay, I know it. On most days, this is where I give up and retreat back into the cool dark of home. On days when I am feeling more determined, like today, I fight it. The world begins to spin around me, not in a perfect circle but in a teeter-tottering, off it’s axis kind of way. I can close my eyes but that doesn’t stop it spinning. I get sick. I can’t think straight. I see the buzzards circle. I know somehow that if I don’t immediately get back inside something terrible will happen. Then I am back inside, dry-heaving in the doorframe, and the birds and Kevin are disappointed.
One time, when Kevin and Mom and I all still lived together, we came home from school and found a bird had gotten into the house through a cracked window. A snapped pinion had embedded itself into the carpet, and the blinds had been ruffled. We found it in Kevin’s room, panting and making these little corkscrew jumps. It could tell where the window was, but couldn’t understand why it couldn’t move through it. I read that a billion birds break their necks running into windows every year. They leave behind imprints where they collide. I did an image search, bird window imprint and scrolled through the endless examples. I went through pages, searching for a dusting on the glass in the shape of siallia siallis. 

August 1

Kevin has been taking care of me since Mom passed. I was her problem before and now I am his. He wouldn’t put it that way though. He’s kind enough not to let me know what a burden I am to him. I know though. I can read it in his face when he thinks I’m not looking, hear it in his sighs when he thinks I am sleeping. Our apartment feels too small even for just me, I can’t imagine how it feels to him. When he gets home from work, I can see him in the parking lot, after the birds have said their goodnights to each other and to me. He sits in the car with the headlights off, just staring at the side of our building. Maybe he has the same fear of coming inside that I do of going out. 

We used to bird-watch together when we were little. We lived in the country then, had all the birds we could want and then some. We didn’t know the names of them or their calls (except of course for the whippoorwill, which everyone knows). We would go for walks in the woods and squint our eyes up at the leaf-filtered sun and point and shout at the silhouettes and make up our own names for them. His favorite bird, though we didn’t know how to label it then, was the European Starling. We didn’t know how it was invasive either, how it has spread into places it doesn’t belong, driving out the native birds. He liked them because they were tough and mean-looking. They aren’t quite black, but they don't really have a color either. He said they reminded him of oil puddles, and that’s what we called them: puddle-birds. 

August 6

Kevin has a girlfriend. It’s his first since high-school I think, one of the saleswomen at his work. I jokingly asked him if he was sleeping his way up the ladder. He didn’t think that was funny. He said he really likes her and they have been seeing each other for a few months but he wanted to keep her a secret. When I asked him why, he shrugged and said he didn’t know how serious it was yet, and didn’t see the point in bringing her up if it was just a fling. I know why he really didn’t want to tell me. If he told me then we’d have to be introduced, and he’d have to explain to her about his shut-in brother. Maybe he already had. Maybe I was still a secret, and he’s been biding his time hoping I would get over this … whatever it is, affliction, and move out so he wouldn’t have to explain anything. I’m sure she is asking why she hasn’t gotten to see his place yet, and he can only come up with so many excuses and distractions. 

I asked him if she liked birds and he said he would ask her. I think he forgot.

August 12

I had to stop seeing Dr. Kimbrell. Kevin said he couldn’t afford it, but I think he just realized that it wasn’t helping. He’s probably right. Dr. Kimbrell just wanted to figure me out. Like I am some kind of puzzle to be solved, like there’s some combination of questions in the right order that will get us both to understand why I’m like this and how it gets fixed. Birds don’t see therapists about windows or outdoor cats, they persevere, build their nests, move south when they need to. They don’t write in journals about their problems. Dr. Kimbrell gave me some websites I could go on if I needed more help. What is a website supposed to do? Asking for help from others is how I got here. 

September 18

I have not had any breakthroughs yet, but I have been trying every day. It hasn’t gotten easier, and I haven’t gotten any farther or stayed out any longer, but I refuse to be discouraged. I have to believe this will disappear one day just as mysteriously as it came. I don’t see much of Kevin anymore, he is spending most of his time working or with his girlfriend. He brought her over one night, late. He didn’t have to tell me that I should stay in my room, not introduce myself. I knew. 

September 24

Kevin has not left any seed in the feeder’s lately. I don’t know if he has just been too busy to think about it, or if he is doing it to motivate me to go out and do it myself. Maybe it's to spite me. I’m too ashamed to ask. I just watch the bags rot in the cupboard.

November 

It was inevitable. Kevin has started moving his things out. He thinks he is doing it discreetly, one or two items missing here and there. He hasn’t summoned the courage yet to admit it to me. I asked him about it and he said he was going to be staying with his girlfriend for a few days. I said some things that I don’t want to write down here. He slammed the door and said he’d done all he could for me. I haven’t heard anything from him since. I guess we’re both cowards. 

December ?

I had a realization today. A breakthrough as my therapist would have called it. The birds are not singing for me, not dancing for me. They are taunting me. They are free and happy and unafraid and I am none of those things. When they sing in the morning, they are not letting me know they have survived another night, they are mocking me for trapping myself another day. They have seen me try and fail so many times to step into their world and they are ridiculing me for it. They perch on the empty bird feeders and stare at me with contempt. Now they can see me. So many different colors and patterns, but their eyes are all black. 

I haven’t seen Kevin or his girlfriend in days. Not even their cars in the parking lot. The birds still come back to the feeder though, as if someday something will change and there will be food in it again. I’d already taken the oats out of the feed but there was still millet and seed left. I threw that out the window to them, watched the sunflower seeds fall to the asphalt. People walk past the mess and sometimes look up at my window to see me watching from my perch. When there are no people or cars around the birds, my friends will swoop in wide arcs and land to pick at the scraps. Their eyes are on the side of their head to watch for predators. They turn their heads sideways to examine crumbs they peck at. Little black eyes. They do not look back up at me. I pound the glass with my hand and they scatter back to the safety of the trees. A handprint on the glass. Here I am. Here I am.