Through a thunderous blackened landscape, shapes formed in a shy dance to paint the canvas of my tired mind; I was in the sleep kings have before they’re beheaded, sitting in my straw throne on the level, waiting to see what wonders the fool had prepared for this night of play. In my dream, I was with my family on vacation. The only way I could tell I was on vacation was that the place was wholly foreign, even through the unfinishedness around me, the brushes of the painter on the hill being ignored to focus on the instructions of the director on the mountain. Even in the middle of a dream, you can’t really appreciate a view. You’re always too busy ‘living’, which mirrors life in its saddest way.

But the reason this play of life took my eyes away was that there was a person on my dreams. Along with my loved ones, there was an apparition, a white blur with blue in blue eyes, silently loving me in its glorious absence of thought. Oh, yes. That is my baby. They were dressed in white — why not? —, looking at me as if death was yesterday’s problem, wishing to reside in my present presence forever. I loved them —why not? Why not lean in and say what I want to say, before these heights discover the Earth that pulls in pleas? Why not be one with this phantom in the white fog of that strange place?

I leaned in. They leaned in. I closed my eyes, getting a good look at that precious face, as one takes the mental picture of a sunset before the Earth pulls the Sun, too, in its miserable pleas. I felt our mouths moving, we were one. Oh, dear, borrow me forever. In the sweeter than sweet feelings of love, my mind pictured their face, their smile, as the sculpture of a god drowning in humanity’s features. I kept my eyes closed, fixated on that phantom. Let me stay in this darkness always, Lord, and through the blackest black show me this light, and I’ll always know thay my way comes to this end, to these lips. Cover the lamplight that lights the universe, there is no use for any other glow if not the one in my loved one’s heart.

Through the shuttered eye, they were clearest, as never been. I couldn’t hold myself longer. I had to see that face again. Maybe it would smile to me shyly, and that, too, would be a sun for my being. I wished to see that. More than ever, we needed to share an atom, beyond the borrowing of a star. I opened my eyes.

I woke up. I was sad. But I understood. The sky was still dark — it was morning. Not this darkness, Lord. Don’t bring me back to this darkness if you don’t want to bring them back to me.

Chapter One — Love Anew

The house was empty, so even if the space was small and loaded, the shadow of an echo was cast through my every step. My grandmother had gone to a doctor’s appointment, and my sister gone to work. All that was left was the company of nothingness, of ghosts in memories and framed pictures and in my sad pace.

In the living room, there were a couple of buckets on a large plastic mat on the floor, with a few pieces of clothing on the inside. There was a hard storm yesterday, and the house is too old and poor to handle bad weather, so it drips onto the living room floor from the terrace above. The only thing we can do to remedy it is to place the buckets, strategically centered on the dripping.

A long time ago, my mother wished to not put a roof on a certain part of the terrace — the part right above the living room — because she wanted to have a place for us to sunbathe when we’d place a plastic pool there, back when we were kids. Even though the idea is great, and I sunbathe there to this day, the Sun chose to claw the cracks in the tiles for all this time, creating the spaces from where the tearful clouds can invade my living room. I know the tiles must enjoy sunbathing, maybe they do. Maybe they enjoy rain, too, no matter how heavy. But we’ve got to take care of them now after so long, I think, while thinking about my dog who passed away at age 16 last november, which would be crying for my grandmother to come back if it was still alive, and running on the tiles in the terrace if it was a bit younger. The house silently sits.

The ceiling was not dripping anymore. There was no rain, but it was dark, like a threat lies in the bed of truth if housed by a mad face. I stared at the house around me. Cracks everywhere, but still standing. We haven’t got water in a week, perks of living in a favela, the forgotten corner of an aimless eye. Still, water finds its way back to us, through our cracked ceiling. There was an atmosphere of decay that haunted every observable space inside these walls, as if a dream of kindness could only be a play made in silence; as if we were destroying ourselves through the poison splattered across our empty chairs, revealing the silhouetted impressions of the faces of our loved ones, melting like ice creams on our tongues. There was a better life to be lived with the gold of our citizens, but we — or at least, I — wore the darkness forever.

I waited for my grandmother to return. She did. No dog to loudly bark and wake up everyone in the neighbourhood, but I was there to hug her. Nothing much to be said, I suppose. That was until she went to the terrace.

My grandma told me she saw an egg on the dirt in one of the terrace’s pots about a week ago. “Maybe it’s a gecko’s egg”, she thought to herself. It was small. I think she just got rid of it. Now, she shows me that near the entrance to the terrace there’s the corpse of a baby bird lying there.

Birds constantly fly through the terrace, since it’s so high (it’s technically a third floor), but there laid a dead little child. It wasn’t very cute to look at, it looked like it had fallen from a height and got smashed. How pitiful, how sad I felt. The stream of decay this house carries got even to this innocent bird, taking his life just for getting near our aura of dry enchantment.

Did it have a soul? Oh, I’m so sorry, little bird, forget what I said. I wish I was here to save you. I don’t quite understand how your fallen body even came here, but it pains me that my only impression of you is of your premature last sadness, and not of your brown body flying on the roof, beautifully above the below, cascading the belly of the world through a tiny vessel of a humble light. Is it odd to say that through your voice that does not sing, I feel the hand of the Earth like never before? As if my time, too, is numbered and closing in, and when my brain is splattered on the floor like yours is, I too will be a voice not voiced?

The day seemed too bright, suddenly. No, Death, stay away. As time is my final water, there is a few things I wish to see, there is some things I wish to say. But how can you move staying in place, watching the lights of the underworld be strong as words are to the blind? How can I be heard, and what do I have to say to those who won’t listen? Whose body, little bird, casts the biggest shadow; the body of a hole or the body of a thought?

Irrelevant.

My grandma disposed of the body. There was no funeral, it was just a common ruddy ground dove — rolinha, in portuguese. There is a bunch of these around here. It was nothing special, I suppose. I wish, however, there would be a sweeter end to this foreigner. I wish the world was endless, an insect’s inescapable husk. Maybe that is what happens through mankind’s metamorphosis; we fly and fall, light and heavy like a lover’s last embrace.

A few days pass by, like nothing. I don’t feel depressed; actually, I often feel quite happy. I feel content with how things are working out. But then, memories come. They grow rapidly, and suddenly the past is the present, and you’re no longer participating in the world; you become a star, the afterimage of the destruction, or rather, past itself. It’s like again the empty chairs have more to say to the living then you do, and every picture frame is having a conversation that is drowning your own voice. I feel suffocated by all I remember, trying to find a way in which everyone lives on in my presence, and not get destroyed and pushed away by my sadness and silence.

I guess I feel this way because during these days that passed, an old friend got married. She was my first crush in the school I would go to through most of my school years, so we met in 2010, when I was nine years old.

It’s so funny. I remember loving her, but she didn’t respond back to me. I couldn’t see any weakness from which my lethal words could come in and propose that love, maybe destroying her in the process. She had her guards up, so that wouldn’t be the time I would disappoint her — that would have to wait. But on the last day of school in that year we met, we were playing so hard she ended up scratching me, leaving a harmless mark. I remember going back to my house, going up to the terrace, looking at the stars and the mark that was starting to itch and thinking “I don’t think love should hurt like this”.

Am I dramatic? I suppose I’ve always been. But it was there and then that I decided we should part ways. I wouldn’t meet her again until 2016, I believe, when high school begun. We became friends again — and once again, I fell in love. But it was quick, she had to move to another state. During that same time, my friend from the Everyone Asked About You review came back to our school, and then for the rest of the year I would love and disappoint her miserably.

The point is that this other friend, the one from 2010, got married. She got married and invited me to the wedding. I didn’t go. I didn’t even give any excuses, I simply didn’t reply. We weren’t the closest friends anymore, but I feel like I ended up, once again, hurting someone while preventing them from hurting me. I guess I finally disappointed her with my love — it was the prize she didn’t know I was preparing for her, for sticking around and trusting I can be a kind person.

When these days are nights and close in tightly, I remember how pathetic it is to feel the phantom pain of an ancient body that belonged to me. I’m in conversations with parts of myself I don’t recognize, but still keep contact, like a toxic parent you can’t live with, but that you can’t cut the ties yet. I validate my suffering and my guilt, and I go through every step of my grieving pains, but I always fall in the same old holes. I wish I could say I’m sorry to those women I hurt because I loved them. But we’re all away on our own clouds now, even if they come and rain on my garden through my every day.

But then again, why couldn’t I see my friend get married? I don’t think I love her or have ever loved her; it was a little autumn thing — as the leaves fell, I fell for her, and then left clotheless and crooked for the winter. Perhaps, just maybe, I didn’t want to go and see life growing its branches through the trees of my surroundings; I wanted to be immersed in shadowless wakes, birthing and dying from a fading star like a thought you forget. Perhaps, is all. I wanted to be forgot.

While thinking about this in a day way after the events, my grandma comes to me. She says she made a brilliant discovery.

Chapter Two — Birdy in the Terrace With a View

There was a bird lying on a nest above the terrace’s entrance, and below the tin roof. She was a mother, according to my grandma, and it was her’s the baby that died a week ago. That is why the baby was dead, he must’ve fell from that nest. My grandma felt a certain grief for the bird’s offspring, but also instantly fell in love with her.

Well, it’s our bird now. Might as well give her a name. I didn’t wanted anything convoluted, so I just named her Pássara, which is a wrong way of saying ‘female bird’ in portuguese. Let’s call her Birdy for now.

We were so happy with Birdy’s arrival. My grandma started to make all the arrangements. She would leave a cup of water and a piece of bread on the floor for Birdy every day, since she was sleeping on the nest all day and never left it — “So she must be so hungry”, thought granny. She even bought these long straws so that Birdy could put in her nest. My grandma really wanted her to feel comfortable in our home.

At the end of the day, she is just missing our dog. She talks to every animal she can these days, which is a much different picture from before she got attached to Maggie. She would always complain about animals, especially dogs and cats, but now she misses having one to sleep by her side while she watches soap operas on the evening. She misses a nap companion, and even though Birdy is stationary in the terrace, just knowing she has another friend just makes her day better.

I guess I wish to become an old man like my grandma, so kind and generous. She has so many friends and so many people know and love her, as if they also see that in her heart lies the most beautiful of ignorances; this love and trust without prejudices, so quick to think that people are kind that she can forget days can become nights.

This reminds me that I got a friend invite from a past crush’s grandmother — that was probably the funniest thing that ever occurred to me. But she seems kind from the photos, with old-woman-on-the-internet silliness that my other grandma also partakes in. I guess I wish they all knew each other. She seems like she is a very lovely lady.

Sorry, did that seem too specific? We can go back to the star of the show, now.

I would always visit Birdy, since I was waking up early to sunbathe before watching a movie in the morning. I got attached to her, and even would talk to her. She was so beautiful, oh, I wish you could see her in person. She looked like a porcelain doll, and if you came really close to the door she would blink twice because it was hard to see you, and it would just melt your heart completely.

I loved her as if she demonstrated some kindness to me, and I guess, in a way, she did. I was starting to think that my decaying spirit could only push those around me away, and that I would eventually lose all footing in the outer space of my inner world. Instead, she came in and showed me beauty. Such beauty that I would be a fool not to feel happy by looking at her — by seeing that she felt safe enough to have an egg around us, that she didn’t believe we had any emanating decadance. In the minds of a needy wimp, she was now part of our home.

I was walking around my house, with the shapes around simply promising their jobs and nothing else, when I came down to my room and saw my child.

The house was a new one I got with my partner, and they were busy in another room. I saw my child playing and I wanted to join in.

He was so handsome, that young boy. He had such beautiful eyes, such a cute face. But the best part was that he was so incredibly smart. I never understood when parents would say “my kid is so smart” when the kid was just doing silly things, but my kid was the Einstein of babies. He had such wonderful questions about the world, and I didn’t want to go anywhere else. I wanted to sit there and see what else could he teach me from where he sit — the best seat you can ever have in your life, which is that of the primordial ignorance.

We played a lot, I would even go and tell my partner: “You will not believe what he just said to me! He is growing so fast!” I was so proud of him.

And then I woke up. He was not around, I was in the play of the mind again.

I wanted to cry. I wanted my baby boy back. I wanted to hear what else he had to say to me, what else was he trying to understand about the world. Seeing him there made me wish to become a better person, so he could maybe feel love like the one I received from my mother. I wanted to be his mother, I suppose, before being his father, but it didn’t matter. I simply wanted him to grow, but he was another one I had to learn to part ways with.

Climbing up the stairs to get my sunbathing, I saw Birdy resting once again.

There was a sort of absence in every presence in my surroundings, except for the look on Birdy’s face, which seemed to tell me a message ready to be drowned in the light of another day of mine. The beauty of the plants in the terrace, the view of the hills and houses, and the mountains far away; all was blue in naked silence, a stillness in the beauty of this outer terror, as if the air even and plain could crash in waves and take my body to another nothingness. In this meaningless sadness, I wanted to talk to Birdy.

“I am feeling unwell, friend”, I said to Birdy. “I miss things past and future, and I want to apologize for what I’m still to do.”

Birdy looked at me. “I want to know if it is you I’m speaking now”, Birdy said.

“Of course it is me”, I said. “It’s always only me”.

“I’m afraid that’s not true. You’re talking to someone, someone lingering and checking in. If I’m to talk to you, I need to know if you want me to be alone with you”.

I wanted to be alone with my friend, but I couldn’t pretend I didn’t see the ghosts who accompanied us. I had to lie to her innocent face.

“I’m alone, Birdy. Talk to me.”

She told me she was happy to be here, among the petals of a fuller day. That she was happy to see the view, even through the days of thunder and grief. She was healthy and thinking of the future. I was glad to hear that.

I asked her if she ever got scared, because she seemed so sure of everything.

She said that everyone gets scared. But she can’t afford to fall and not get up, with wings as beautiful as hers, and nature to take care of. Nature seemed to be her home, mother and child, carrying the memories through the present like a catastrophic force of love.

“Are you worried about death, Birdy?”

“I think of the death of my loved ones more than my own death — I think that them leaving this life behind and missing out on these sunny days would be worse than any day I might miss, for they were always flowers of nature, while I am the transit in the sky.”

I suddenly remembered: she had lost her baby a few weeks ago. He had fallen from her nest and crashed his skull on the terrace floor.

“Do you miss him, Birdy?”

“He was all the reason for this Sun you see, and now that he left, every star feels like it’s looking directly at me, pointing to my tiny space in this city forest, keeping me up at night to catch their light. But life is living, it always is and was. What it gives, it takes, and it is only natural that we pay the price of living when we kiss so terribly close to the tongue of death. That is to care and be cared; the lightning and the thunder, smaller than the silence.”

Birdy’s words couldn’t reach me.

“I’m sorry, Birdy, but can you help me? What should I do in this shattered life: should I wait or should I leave?”

“Either way you lose, son. You only wish for my wings to vanish from this land while keeping your eyes to see the view. You wish to live for free, to forget and be forgot. Tell me, what it was you thought when you went to your mother’s funeral?”

I thought many things on that day. That the world was gray, that the world was endless and short, like a feist when you’re already full. I couldn’t stop crying. But there was something that stuck with me.

“I saw all her friends there. There were so many people there. I wished… I wished that my funeral was full of people that loved me, too”, I said. “Knowing so many people that only had good things to say about me. That missed me dearly. I wanted that.”

“Then talk to them, son. Reach out for the ones who you loved. That’s the only thing that matters.”

“But they hate me, Birdy, they do. I hurt them, I hurt them bad.”

“And they did not die, they fly still, beyond you.”

She couldn’t understand. The dreams I have, the hurt I caused them. I suddenly became angry, as if my stone mind would crash into the car of her words, tranquil and stationary in the tender she carried in quiet eyes. I felt my chest shiver, for I was feeling my arms were far too frail to the task.

I was made to reach for the moon, always.

“I didn’t make you for this, son.” Birdy said those words and looked at the horizon, while I looked at her porcelain body with tears in my eyes.

The days passed like bullets from a gatling gun, marking my silhouette as a warning, making me shiver through every sound. I was impossibly cowardly, for I knew what I had to do to sleep well was to apologize to myself first. But I was impossible to be reach in those weeks, and the only thing I wished to do when I’d wake up was to look at the cracks in the ceiling and wait for the water to drip from them again.

But it did not. We were back to the drought. How I felt the relief; the weather was sick in the head, and these winged wishes vanished under the shower. I was the hunter and the prey, and it was my season.

I hadn’t talked to Birdy all this time. I was ashamed. I couldn’t show my face. I couldn’t tell her that I had given up, once again, on trying to contact those ladies of the past.

Also because I think she said she was my mom at the end there, which was super weird and confusing. Oh, God, did I write her on a character once again?

But after so long, I started to understand what she said. Love may be the only indestructable stone in this plain. We are cursed to walk until the breath fails, so if we’re on the same road, we’ll all lose our breath on the same places. This is where we say our hello’s, beautiful people of yesterday. This is why we rise from our beds; the entrances that work as exits. And I will always come back, even if without my presence, even if I have to wait. I can’t only see you all again on the day my body gets cold and teary.

I wished, then, to go back and meet Birdy again. Apologize for anything and thank her for what she said to me. But then, as I was walking up the stairs, I was met with a wonderful view.

Birdy! She had a baby! And by God, is it grown.

My grandma had this theory that Birdy was living in our terrace because she was trying to hatch another egg. I thought I had seen a different, smaller bird a couple of weeks ago on Birdy’s place, but thought I was imagining things. But now it’s final: she is a mother, a beautiful one.

She protected him and he grew up to be so healthy. Look at him! He’s so handsome! I’m so proud of her. I went running to tell my grandmother the good news.

She loved the photo. She also felt really happy for Birdy, knowing that she had lost her child previously. We laughed and celebrated — Earth keeps on being this miraculous scenery full of flavors, ever sweeter than the embers of any of yesterday’s fires.

I felt really happy for her. My friend got a child, and I got to be here and witness this. The little one looked so beautiful, too. Like a child waking up in the morning with messy hair, because their mother is calling them for breakfast. Oh, life, never stop these workings, these veins in the winds. Forever take me to see where it all starts, in the presence of the light of the first morning.

Birdy looked at me, tenderly. “As you said, I am the mother and child of nature. When you talk to me, when you are one with the trees and the view, you are nature. I am not your mother who passed away, I am your mother who will be here long after you come back to her. This stationary light of dawn and dusk, the corpse that first carried the blood, and love that sets quietly shamed. And in every green and wings, I’ll come to you. And you are the Earth forever, son, even when you close your eyes to not see the view from the terrace. It is why you see the love of your past mother in the love of God, and why you wish to see brightness enchanted. It’s time you become the light again. I want to see you smile again.”

Oh, Birdy, you’ve grown so much.

A couple of days pass by. I go to the terrace.

There’s no birds on the nest anymore. There are a few around in other houses’ roofs, but I can’t say if they’re ours.

They’re gone. She had her offspring and now they left to live a better life.

That empty nest — what a feeling.

What words could I say, Birdy, so you could find your place forever in the arms of that terrace? And where will you go, Birdy, and where will you lay your head?

Will you be safe? Will your soul be quiet as it was here, with your songless voice with healing intentions, retreating to the silence of a prey of a kind of love?

Will it get cold one day, Birdy, and in that day you’ll find your nest still here? Or will you simply find another terrace? Tell me, Birdy, where is the home of any feet located from the flying lust? And is it so that you have no thoughts, no soul, and no love?

Regardless, thank you, Birdy. You were my one to tell me there was beauty to be had near me, to be the miracle of the night after day. All the troubles I told you, all the love we talked about; they are as part of the wind as your tiniest body of light, sincerely casting life from the borders of a prayer.

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Listen to Nightporter’s playlist for October!

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