I like Birds.

I went outside and stared at a tree this weekend. I was sitting barefoot and I was on a blanket that wasn't mine. I was on the deck of a house that wasn't mine. I was about four feet from a man I'd only just met, and he sat in silence. Behind me, in a house that also wasn't mine, I heard voices of 15 people scattered around. Laughing and giving definition to the word joy. Many who had entered my life only once before, if that. Some, very dear to me. They didn't care who could hear them through the walls and open windows as this was now our home, and we now were a family. It became our deck, our house, our blanket. Our tree. Even if it was just for a few days. (The things being ours, I mean.) The sun beat down on my bare legs. I welcomed it. The intrusion of heat and light. I needed it. I'd been asleep for the past month, I'd been hiding out. The warmth reminded me how good it is to feel, and moments of clarity seeped into my pores. And I had no sunscreen on to block them out. I stared at the tree, hard. And as I focused, tears tried to come out, but they only tried. I think I was done crying. I felt my cheeks involuntarily creep up and I realized I was smiling. There were, what I thought to be, bugs, swarming and flying around the tree. Circling it. But, the tree, you see, was pretty far off. So I am going to say they were birds. And they were flying around waiting for me to see them. Not that I have a problem with, or there is anything wrong with, a swarm of bugs. But I like how this starts better if it were in fact birds.