The Bird

Of all the things I came across on my travels

Nothing was so striking as she

Not graceful

Nor poised

Nor elegant

But remarkable still.

Flown far away

Never again within my reach

Nor I within hers

That's how she would prefer it.

If she only knew I haven't forgotten

That she isn't truly gone from me

Although I almost wish she was

But I know this is where she wants to remain

Forever tangled deep in the thorns of my mind

Prodding at me from within.

Perhaps there was never anyone there

Only a figment of my imagination

How I wish it were true

The sting of her memory is nearly too great

To possibly be worth

Worth what? Beatrice had given him something. Wirt knew that much. What he didn't know was how he could put it into words. But wasn't that his thing? He was supposed to be the poet, the pilgrim, the one who'd endured a soul-searching journey and come out having discovered something. If he hadn't, he would never write anything for her that sounded so much like a love poem.

But even if his writing remained unfinished for a good two years (and didn't even have that great of a title), life went on. The high schoolers' age-appropriate drinks had become mostly cheap vodka mixed into Gatorade so no one could smell it on their breath, and half of Wirt's friends had all but stopped talking to him, replaced one-by-one by some new people from his physics class. It was fine though. They were doing their thing, he was doing his (just maybe not as well as he had before). So was Beatrice, whatever her thing was nowadays. Wirt himself wasn't much for getting wasted, but he'd sip from at least one bottle throughout the nights they all spent at the cemetery, or the 7/11 parking lot, or the basketball court at the park, or wherever.

Tonight was different.

He tried to calm himself, remind himself that Beatrice wasn't that uncommon of a name, and he'd never even found out what her last name was (although now something told him it might've been Gordon). But the epitaph was all he needed to see:

I want you to remember only this - Nature makes no mistakes.

The idea had been in the back of his mind for the past few years, ever since he'd noticed a headstone with the name Quincy Endicott engraved at the top, but he had to force himself into denial. Endicott had been, like, sixty at the youngest. He hadn't had that many years ahead of him. So despite the dates on the grave indicating that there was a slim chance of it, Wirt managed to convince himself for a little while that it was just the old man. Okay, maybe the Woodsman too. He'd seemed roughly the same age, if not older. But Beatrice had been around Wirt's age, and human by the time he'd gotten back home. If anyone could have cheated even a natural death, it'd be her, right?

But no one could. He knew that.

The Unknown had been like stepping back in time a good ninety years. Like one of those old-timey silent movie posters from the nineteenth century. What with its one-room schoolhouse, weird tavern full of villagers that seemed like something straight out of Little House on the Prairie, the men with monocles and top hats, and the women with updos and poofy sleeves. He should have figured it out a long time ago. They were all long gone. All of them.

Nevertheless, it made him want to break down right there in front of all his sort-of friends. Nausea started to set in as he choked back tears. No one else there would ever know why he kept glancing back at the headstone over the few hours they were there. They would never believe him even if he wanted to tell them. He downed a second bottle of the illegal, age-inappropriate Gatorade and grabbed a third. If he was going to get sick, he wanted a decent excuse.

He should have at least been comforted by the notion that she'd thought of him too, and he'd already known he'd never see her again - he couldn't have risked drowning just to get lost once more. But this wasn't supposed to happen. Not the way he saw it. Before, he'd sometimes wondered what she was doing while he was at one of these little gatherings, or a party, or a family vacation. Now there was no question. She wasn't doing anything because she couldn't do anything because she'd been gone since before he was even born. He made a mental note never to tell Greg; maybe he would figure it out on his own eventually, but Wirt wanted to let his brother live in that fret-free world for just a little while longer. It was far too late for the elder child.

Around 2:20 AM, when everyone else was leaving - most of them sleeping over at someone else's house since they were too drunk to drive themselves and none of the relatively sober kids would let them do anything that foolish - Wirt fished a wrinkled piece of notebook paper out of his jacket pocket, tried to smooth it out, folded it twice, and stuck his ever-unfinished work in the dirt, letting the first few tears fall. Maybe he didn't need to write down what he'd found out. They both knew already. All he had to do was try not to forget. He was, in a way, content with knowing just that, and that in the time he was back home she'd gotten married and had at least one kid. The stone didn't tell him any more, but he didn't need to be told. He knew who she'd been, even up to the age of seventy-six.

Not bad for a bluebird, he couldn't help but think. He couldn't possibly imagine her as an old woman (he'd only seen her as a human for maybe thirty seconds at most), let alone rotting underground. So he instead tried to picture her the way she'd left him: running as well as she could in a dress, clutching those weird scissors as tightly as she could, setting out to fix her mistakes as best she could. Still her practical self, but hopeful nonetheless. He was certain she would've rolled her eyes at the description.

It just sounded more poetic that way.