The Unworthy

by Agustina Bazterrica

A dead bird is decomposing. There are so few that I decide to pay it homage, to observe death at work. The grass around the corpse is dry, the bird’s fluids having drained down to nourish the earth. The creature looks framed by an aura that could protect it from further death, as though nature has given it a prominent spot because of its sacrifice. A personal sanctuary. The cells have been destroyed and the volatile substances have traveled through the air. The ritual has begun. Flies and beetles feed on it and deposit their larvae in its hollows, in its open mouth, in its wounds. They eat its flesh, its tissues, its eyes, its organs, in a minute, frenetic dance. Together, silently, they shred the bird. They produce a smell that’s rank and heavy. I can also smell the perfume of dead flowers. (I wonder if God is inside the larva. Our God, whose name we don’t know. I wonder if God is the hunger behind hunger, and if behind God lurks the hunger for another God.) I wonder what stage of death she’s in, under the earth, if she feels her body disappearing little by little in the darkness that covers her. If she’s defenseless. The bird died looking up at the sky between the leaves in the trees. Or looking up at the stars. It died surrounded by beauty. Helena died in the dark, she died in the disaster. She was the one who taught me that disaster means living without stars, or celestial bodies, or comets, without the light of night, in complete darkness. (In the mouth of God?) She w...