She spends her afternoons standing under the power lines listening to the everlasting buzz. Up there, the mourning doves assemble. When a single dove rustles at one end of the wire, the others fluff and rearrange. When a new bird lands, the rest adjust their feet the tiniest bit, one step at a time, holding out their wings like a whole string of feathered Wallendas.
She tiptoes along the edge of the driveway, pretending the line between gravel and grass is her sliver of ether, a string of the universe she alone has the power to stand on, to draw from. Inevitably, she stumbles and the softness of the grass on the soles of her feet does nothing to soften her disappointment.
Inside her heart is a sadness. She listens to the world to see who else might understand.
Above her, the mourning doves who-ah-who-who-who.
Somehow they know.
After the thunderstorms, she stands in the driveway afraid to move because of the worms. Her nose filled with ozone, her heart washed empty, until she steps on a worm and crushes it, slices it clean, and the world is dirty again. Her parents put on their raincoats and explode their umbrellas with a zip and a zing. Water rooster-tails from their tires as they speed their vehicles away.
She watches for the world to help her understand how to navigate these obstacles.
The worms, they do not move.
Somehow they know.
In her dream, she stands by the edge of the water and admires the crimson brow of the sandhill crane. She has seen him in the ornithology books at school, in the aviary at the zoo, in the Japanese wing of the museum. She tiptoes through the brush, through the woods, through the cedar-lined closet of her mind, trying to trace the path of the Grus canadensis canadensis, to find out where it is that he goes. Inevitably, she stumbles and the crashing of her limbs through the blackberry barbs, the tearing of her skin, sends the cranes into flight.
She watches their bellies disappear into the night and wonders if she will ever be so strong.
The thump of their passage billows her lungs.
Somehow they know.
In her dream, the warrior draws his bow and shoots his arrow at the moon. When the arrow strikes, the moon explodes and feathers fall from the sky. She tiptoes through the stars and plucks the feathers one by one, hiding them away in her pack like a thief.
Becca Borawski Jenkins is a writer and editor. She holds an MFA in Cinema-Television Production from USC and has short stories appearing or forthcoming in The Forge, The Knicknackery, Panorama, Five 2 One, Citron Review, and Corium. She lives with her husband in an RV they built by hand, on an off-grid homestead somewhere in the Idaho Panhandle.
