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Memory 11

Moving on is more than a decision, it's a process.

I'm willing to admit I've been a mess.

At first it felt a crawl. The seconds stretched and distorted until time itself was unrecognizable.

But that didn't last. Nothing does.

Even with all I'd been through, things settled down. The days made their way into weeks as they always do and I had to move with them. Things returned to normal or, at least, settled into a new normal. Still, at some point new is not new anymore. Even the most novel of ideas becomes pastiche with repetition and time, it is inevitable.

Irrespective of reason, I found calm. Things weren't so bad as they once were, they were merely different, and different became status quo. For the most part I had made my peace.

Whatever I felt for Cecil didn't go away, though I refused to put a name to it. I didn't believe I had earned that right. The echoes of past delusions rung out in my mind. I desperately didn't want to make the same mistakes again.

I guess that was a good impulse.

Plenty of nights were spent stargazing. I would look into the night sky and just... think. Often I thought about Sophie: about the time I'd spent with her, the things she'd said to me, the mistakes I'd made. Yes, I thought about Sophie, much as I had done before, but this was different. She was no longer the object of my desires, she was no longer deified or abstracted, but rather a real person with her own thoughts and feelings. I didn't know what she thought, or how she felt, but that was exactly the point.

I found baffling the me that used to be - embarrassing, even - but it didn't matter, I was past it. At least outwardly, and that was a step forward. The clutter and confusion that constituted my inner world was an ever-evolving mess, but on some level I was okay with that. Being able to admit I had issues was as much of a solution as I needed for the moment.

For the first time in my life I was aware that I had time, and that things did not need to be solved overnight, nor often could they be. For the first time in my life I had some sense of scope and perspective outside of myself.

The world does not revolve around me, and all that.

Obvious, right? Everybody knows that, so why did it take me so long to get it?

Hearing wisdom and nodding along is one thing, living by it is quite another. Honestly, I think it's only common to hear something true and insightful, to internalize the words as sage advice and believe you are living in accordance with them, when in reality the opposite is true.

Denial is a hell of a drug.

There's another pithy statement for us to repeat and ignore. We read it and nod our heads and move on, but it's not that simple. Very few things are.

Self-reflection is hard. Admitting all of your own faults in an honest and truly impartial fashion may actually be impossible, but striving to do so is far from pointless.

It is my belief that I am doomed to be misshapen, imperfect, ignorant and wrong, but I am not doomed to never chase perfection, to never learn, to never reshape myself, to never strive to be who I wish I was. I think on it often. On starry nights. On quiet mornings. On lazy days spent indoors with Cecil, with my best friend in the world. My something more.

We spent a lot of time together, as we ever had, but things were different now. Of course they were. They had to be.

A couple of times he made a pass at me in some attempt to reignite our past intimacy. I remember his beak passing so close to mine they were almost brushing, his parted as if to beckon a kiss. His eyes caught mine. God knows I would have loved to reciprocate, but I couldn't. I just couldn't. Every bit as much as I wanted to, the thought of going through with it made my stomach swell with anxiety

Did he love me? Did I love him? Would knowing the answers to those questions even help?

I couldn't make the same mistakes again. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I did.

The next week his hand found it's way to my hip when we were sat watching TV together. It felt its way up my side, I was all aflutter as his fingers flattened my feathers. He would have kept going, I wanted him to, but I couldn't let him. I...

I took hold of his arm and pulled it away gently; I offered a soft smile and silence. It crushed him. I could see that it crushed him. I...

He didn't try again after that.

Still, he was there for me as he ever was. His fierce loyalty never wavered once.

My feelings for him remained, the ones I could barely make sense of.

I thought it high time I examined them. Now, on those sleepless starry nights, I do.

Memory 12

At some point I had moved in with Cecil. How exactly it had come to pass was still unclear to me. It all happened in a frenetic blur of opportunity and necessity. He had grown sick of his small apartment, and I was long since sick of living with my parents. Time had passed, debts were paid, savings had grown. One thing led to another and now we had a place of our own.

I would often rise from my slumber to the sight of him in his boxers and a baggy tee making breakfast and coffee for two. Seeing him like that never failed to make me smile, or make my heart beat that little bit faster, if only for a moment.

We were three years older now, and presumably three years wiser. I had a stable, full-time job. I was a real adult, I supposed. It wasn't a job I had any major passion for, but one I could wake up and go to without any special sense of dread. Plus, my colleagues were nice, so there was that.

Onwards and upwards as the saying goes, or at the very least onwards.

Cecil had been back at the whole dating thing over the past year or two. A couple of times things had even lasted for a while, but no one had stuck quite yet.

It was hard seeing him with other people. A petty part of me often resented his lovers, but I never let it show. I respected Cecil far too much for that, I more than respected him, but I took it at least as a sign that he was over me, or perhaps that he was never actually into me in the first place. It didn't matter. It was a question by now that I had left behind.

I tried dating too. It hadn't gone well so far. I couldn't really seem to gel with anyone. Only one attempt lasted longer than two weeks and in the end it netted me a new friend, but not a lover. I had begun to wonder whether I simply wasn't ready for love.

But the fluttering in my stomach every time I found Cecil lounging in his underwear on the sofa watching some trashy program in the middle of the night spoke counter to that.

I wanted him. I was certain of that now. I had been certain of it a long while by this point, but I'd done nothing with the information.

I knew I was into him, but I didn't know if that meant I was in love with him, or if it meant I should actually try anything. What if it didn't work out? Or he turned me down? Or I fucked it up and it all burned down? Even the thought of things ending with Cecil the way they did with Sophie sent me into panic mode.

Can I admit something?

In spite of all that, I know if he ever actually asked me out I wouldn't even hesitate to say yes.

Maybe that makes me pathetic, but it's the truth.

Now, I knew I had to move on, I wasn't delusional. I just needed time. But as weeks turned to years I had to admit my time was up.

That was the thought that struck me one night, staring starry eyed up into the sky.

The next morning I woke up, got out of bed and left my room to the usual sight of him in his boxers and a baggy tee making breakfast and coffee for two.

"There they are," he said, looking up at me. "Good morning Ribbon."

My heart thumped hard in my chest - that instinctual reaction wasn't going anywhere anytime soon - but I didn't give in to it. I didn't fantasize or drift off in what-ifs and what-abouts. I was done with that. Instead I simply wished him a good morning and offered my assistance.

"I'm good," he said with a passing glance in my direction. He carried on as normal, then looked up once again. The look lingered into a stare and his eyes traced my body, from bottom to top, until they caught mine.

He smiled and said: "You don't half make it hard to forget I crushed on you for so long." He laughed. And my heart stopped. And he hesitated and he flinched and he said: "Oh, you didn't know?"

Moment 6

"You what?" I ask, wide-eyed and flustered.

All this time I had deliberated and wondered and now he just-

He-

He laughs and rubs the back of his head, squinting.

"Yeah, I guess I never said, huh? I must have assumed you picked up on it since, you know, we stopped being physically intimate a few years back. I kinda saw that as you saying: I see you, and I don't want to make a scene, but the answer is no."

My heart is thumping hard. It's tough to form words. From mind made-up to a mess in moments.

"Well, I, uh-"

"No. No need to explain," he shakes his head and waves his hands dismissively. He's flustered. Cecil is flustered. Here I've been thinking he's unshakable, and there he is: flustered. "You were going through a lot at the time, I misread signals, that's all."

So I was right all along? Cecil wanted me exactly how I thought he had. And I wanted him. And he moved on? And I moved on? And now? And now what?

Is it pathetic to say I feel a little faint?

I reach out and grab the kitchen side, feeling the need to take hold of something solid.

"You were into me?"

His head tilts, he can't hold my gaze. He's embarrassed. Cecil is embarrassed.

"Yeah, pretty hardcore actually. I thought you knew. I mean, I didn't think I was all too subtle about it back then."

"I, uh, I guess you weren't." I say, still stumbling through the mental hurdles I've suddenly found myself flung toward.

"So you, uh, you at least had a hunch? Or...?"

"I had a hunch. Yeah. I was just... I was..."

"I know, Ribbon, I know. That wasn't an easy time for you."

"No. Well, yes, but that's not all. I just, I couldn't trust myself back then. I couldn't make sense of anything, I-"

"It's okay." He touches my arm, and I freeze. And our eyes meet, and my heart thumps harder than ever. "It's nothing, really. That was three years ago. There's no sense in you reliving such a tumultuous time in your life over a silly little crush of mine." He offers a smile and he's back in full Cecil mode. The rock. The font of wisdom. The endless source of patience.

But he's more than all that. He always has been. He's a bird. Like me. And he feels. And he fumbles. And he makes mistakes. He's Cecil. And oh god I-

"I had a crush on you too," I say. The words burst from my beak. I can't stop them escaping. I can't put them back in.

Our eyes remain locked. The moment lingers unnaturally. His tongue moves in the air but no words are formed.

And then:

"Yeah?" He asks.

"Yeah." I say.

And he can't bring himself to say another word. And neither can I.

But for the first time in a long time I'm sure of something.

I place my hand on his hip. He doesn't move. I bring it up, under his tee, over the feathers that cover his stomach. He doesn't move. My hand reaches his chest and I press down. I can feel him, all of him, all at once. His heart is beating, thumping, racing, the same as mine.

He realizes what I'm doing and mimics my action until he can feel me too: my heart, my blood, my everything.

My beak parts, his does too.

His head tilts, mine does too.

I move in. He does too.

Nothing lasts forever.

Not love.

Death kills that, if nothing else.

Not life.

Death ends that, if nothing else.

And things change.

People change.

They grow.

Feelings change.

They transform.

And I don't know where I'll be in a year. Or ten.

And in a hundred? I'll be dead.

But right now?

Right now is infinity.

It goes on and on

and on.

And in this moment I know I'm still young.

And that no matter what goes wrong

this went right.

And that even when it's over

it's not gone.