Migrations

by Charlotte McConaghy

it’s simply remembering what it feels like to love creatures that aren’t human. A nameless sadness, the fading away of the birds. The fading away of the animals. How lonely it will be here, when it’s just us.

The first to rise is mine. I have taken to thinking of her as mine because she has burrowed inside and made a home in my rib cage.

I find mine in the sky again, leading the way. She is smaller and smaller, halved and halved again. Don’t, I whisper, inside. Don’t leave. But I know she must. It’s in her nature.

My life has been a migration without a destination, and that in itself is senseless. I leave for no reason, just to be moving, and it breaks my heart a thousand times, a million.

But I know better than that. 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.

And I understand that we will never need the word, for this is a greater proclamation, this is the immensity of love and its furthest-reaching depths.

When my daughter is born without breath, drowned by my body, part of me goes to sleep. I go in search of something to wake it.

“You think they’ll keep flying, don’t you,” I say. Niall nods once, slowly. “Why?” “Because it’s in their nature.”