I caught a bird once. It had smiled at me – more of a smirk of its cheeks, one that said, “here we are then, you pose an interesting problem for me.” The problem was that the bird was put off by my human form. Humans spend most of their time grabbing this and stepping over that, lifting and hoisting and stomping and clapping. They audience the symphony of their own heaving, wheezing flesh sack. It’s not entirely pleasant to look at.

The bird, a robin, was more to my taste than I was to it. Did you know birds don’t have teeth unless you stopper their mouth open and look inside? They command a sly superposition of their white shards, unless observed, a tooth it is not.

I didn’t test the robin on this, I never asked it. I tried to hold it in the palm of my mind, virtualize some contact. But a level of confidence that I lacked on our first encounter was required to tussle those feathers. Some feathers asked me questions. One of them wondered how it was that I came to these lands? Another asked me about human cuisine, then disputed my pontification about mushroom roasting. A confident feather it was, and it didn’t burrow too deep despite our disagreements.

Other feathers played along with the games we spun that day. There’s a habit that a subset of humanity has adopted which involves being overtly mournful for the dead. It’s as if for every person that has passed a clock is started, one that ticks on the heartbeat and tocks on the breath of the one we have lost. Hammered in the side of the clock is a micro-gramophone which yells those mechanical spasms straight in the ears. It’s hard work hearing the rest of the world when a lost beat rattles the cochlea.

In death, I believe, we are gifted more by someone than in life. The robin would agree with me. Lessons that even a herd of Lamas couldn’t collectively weave from their tongues. Death also has its own language, a universal one at that. A language that is conducted purely by the exchange of a few numbers. 1810-1896. 1893-1924. 1989-1989.

My robin and I played games with death, tried to learn its language through simple trivias. We asked it how big they go, or let it show us the saddest one in its collection. Some numbers needed work, other numbers held their weight with pride, others still sought some identity yet unknown. We thanked death for these games and we supped hot coffee, for both of us shared a nice anatomical trait: we had one mouth and a throat that followed. This, looking back, was something pleased with.

Did you know I sat on the bench with that robin that day and looked over a burning concrete empire? The robin wanted to move away from that burning empire, have more say over the blueprint of its nest. I told it I don’t mind sitting in the piles of arborous appendages others had collected for me.

You know I didn’t really catch that bird. I, instead, was caught by a bird. One night I sat with my palms, cupped like I was hibernating an invisible kiwi, and it just flew right in. I always imagined birds as creatures that approach an abyss with calculated caution. They measure with both eyes, sample a few perspectives from afar, and then once all information has been chugged through the brain gullet it dives in or winks into the backdrop. My robin just took a seat, right there in my palm.

A year, that’s how long I kept my palms like that, that’s how long that robin stayed there. I didn’t squeeze it tight, it could have sat up and buzzed off if it so pleased. I would have watched it go like a silk string in the wind, foolishly chasing its vanishing tail. But it never left, or when it did, it always came back. Sometimes I brought it food, other times it brought me feasts. Our equality in throats and mouths, again, was useful.

Sometimes we talked about how one day I might not hold my palms out like this any more, and one day it would have to fly off to its nest, and I to whatever future brick cube someone had prepared for me. And other times, while she was out fluttering and humming through the world, I would run simulations in my head. Plant myself as the figure who would drop his hands down on his lap or let them tumble to his side, like a toppled town bell, never to be held at great heights again. In my head I would see my robin return and there would be no smile, her eyes like lost buttons ripped from pockets. She would be there, right there, where my hands could simply re-obtain their goblet status and offer her an embrace to sit within. But I would look back, equally confounded, and not budge.

Today is exactly eleven months from when I caught a bird. I recall not another bird flew in the sky that day we met. It was a lamppost that coordinated our greeting, though I never remember thanking the lamppost for its selfless act in the proceeding. I’ll go back to that lamppost some day and certainly thank it with a coffee or the tip of the hat, whichever it may prefer. Today is eleven months from when I caught a beautiful robin, had its plumage, it toes, its beak, its pigments of rose, its intellectual burgundies, its soft creams, the whole palette of delight all in my hands and all for myself. But I awoke today and saw not two hands before me, but a space with no hands. That in my slumber I had let my hands fall, broken the bowl and cleaved the perch of my robin. And, like in a thousand mind-simulations prior, my robin returned. She hovered before me and her eyes asked me for a warm hand, and I just walked away.