Migrations

by Charlotte McConaghy

We had no money, but we went often to the library. According to Mam, inside the pages of a novel lived the only beauty offered up by the world. Mam would set the table with plate, cup, and book. We’d read through meals, while she bathed me, while we lay shivering in our beds, listening to the scream of wind through the cracked windows. We’d read while we balanced on the low rock walls that Seamus Heaney made famous in his poetry. A way to leave without really leaving.

The Arctic tern has the longest migration of any animal. It flies from the Arctic all the way to the Antarctic, and then back again within a year. This is an extraordinarily long flight for a bird its size. And because the terns live to be thirty or so, the distance they will travel over the course of their lives is the equivalent of flying to the moon and back three times.”

If I had the power, I’d carry the birds all the way. Protect them from the journey’s difficulty. Then again, it’s a fool who tries to protect a creature from its own instincts.

We are, all of us, given such a brief moment of time together, it hardly seems fair. But it’s precious, and maybe it’s enough, and maybe it’s right that our bodies dissolve into the earth, giving our energy back to it, feeding the little creatures in the ground and giving nutrients to the soil, and maybe it’s right that our consciousness rests. The thought is peaceful.

A life’s impact can be measured by what it gives and what it leaves behind, but it can also be measured by what it steals from the world.

It isn’t fair to be the kind of creature who is able to love but unable to stay.

“Don’t you have to work?” “What’s the point?” he asks. “Nothing ever changes.” I am surprised to hear this from him but I suppose I shouldn’t be; the other side of passion is melancholy, after all.

“Don’t apologize too much, kid. It’ll bleed you dry.” “What if you’ve a lot to apologize for?” “Once is enough for anything.”