Night had fallen over the neighborhood, but the pool lit the backyard in a wavering blue glow, casting long, shimmering reflections against the backdrop of trees. From the field beyond the neighborhood, smoke curled into the dark sky, low and restless. A brush fire, small but stubborn, lit the horizon with a smoldering glow. Overhead, a helicopter circled endlessly, its spotlight slicing through the smoke, the blades drumming a warning into the bones of the earth.
The two young girls splashed in the jacuzzi, their laughter high and bright, their voices bright and wild, splashing water that glittered like stars under the backyard lights, cutting through the strange tension like birdcalls at the edge of a storm. They were untouched by the strangeness of the night, unaware — still sealed inside the easy magic of childhood, their laughter a bubble of normalcy against the backdrop of smoke and sirens. Their voices untouched by the strange, charged energy all around them — innocent islands in the midst of rising chaos.
It happened in an instant. The puppy, still clumsy with joy, tore through the yard, crashing through a thick bush. The leaves shook violently. Then, like a fallen star, a broken shape tumbled out onto the cement – a baby bird, thrown from its hidden nest.
The man, chasing after the dog, almost ran over it, shouting, waving the dog away. He stopped cold. “It’s a bird.” Kneeling down to try to capture it, clumsily pawing at it trying to pick it up, to no avail. “Come pick it up,” he called to me. He straightened, backed away, and motioned for me to come closer while he shooed the dog away. As I approached, I could see a small shape lay trembling in the pavement: a baby bird, fallen too soon from its veiled world.
It was warm and wet from the dog’s mouth, trembling with some final reserve of life. It smelled faintly of earth, of feathers, of something slipping away. The bird, slick and broken, settled into my palms as if it knew no other choice. The man turned away, chasing the dog back, searching for the nest.
She was left alone with it.
It was so light, so impossibly fragile. For a moment, she thought it was already gone. But then — a flutter. Wild, desperate, furious with life. The tiny heart beating against her skin, wings pushing against the inevitable.
Passing overhead, the helicopter roared on. Beyond the fence, fire licked at the darkness.
And in her hands, the bird fought — a desperate, frantic flutter — wings shivering against her skin as if trying to rise one last time.
She bent her head low over it, whispering in the voice she used to soothe her daughter from bad dreams. “You’re okay,” she murmured. “You’re not alone. You’re safe.” She stroked the damp feathers with the gentlest brush of her fingertip, trying to smooth away the terror.
The bird’s wings moved once more, a fierce and beautiful surge against the dying night —— stronger than before, as if to fight death off with its whole being —and then went still.
She carried the bird closer to the pool’s edge, into the clean, sharp light.
Blood darkened the down around its head — or was it the eye? In the shifting shadows and thin darkness, she couldn’t quite tell.
Behind her, the man swept his phone’s flashlight through the tangled bush, still searching for the nest, as if returning it to its home could undo the damage.
She held the bird under his light and said, “look, I think it’s bleeding.” It lay still in her hands now, terribly still. She brushed its foot with her finger, teasing gently, almost begging for a response. But the bird didn’t move.
The man turned, glanced, and said, in a voice stripped of ceremony, “It’s dead.” Then, as if the weight of it hadn’t yet fallen heavy enough, he echoed it again —“It’s dead.”
The girls went on laughing in the jacuzzi, their splashes sending tiny waves across the glowing pool. They were oblivious — untouched by the small death cradled just steps away.
To them, the cold night was still alive with games and light and the promise of summer.
They would not remember the way a bird had fallen that night, or how quietly life could slip away.
But she would.
But the words meant nothing in the sacred silence that wrapped around her.
Because she knew.
She had been chosen — for a moment, for a breath, for a life.
To carry it from terror to peace.
To hold its last wild beat inside her hands.
When she looked up, she could feel it — the fire, the stars, the spinning blades — all bearing silent witness.
She had not merely watched the bird die.
She had walked with it to the edge of the world.
Later, when the night had gone still and the girls’ laughter had faded into dreams, she would sit with the memory of it. She would wonder if it had been an omen — if death delivered into her hands was some silent curse, a shadow cast over her without warning.
She would learn that a dying bird in your hands can symbolize the loss of innocence, the fragility of life, or the end of a cycle. In some superstitions, a bird dying in your hands could be seen as a bad omen, a sign of impending change, loss, or sorrow.
But in her heart, she knew otherwise.
Because somewhere in the heavy night, in the glow of water and firelight, something sacred had unfolded.
A life had been held. Witnessed. Loved.
In the shadow of burning fields, under the judgment of smoke and stars,
she had been a shelter for something wild and fleeting.
And even as sorrow rooted itself quietly inside her chest, she understood:
The bird had not fallen into darkness alone.
It had fallen into grace —
and she had carried it there.
Sonnet – The Dying in My Hands
The smoke drew scars across the broken skies,
The fields were bleeding light from dying flame;
The earth gave up a bird with bloodied eyes,
And summoned me by grief, and not by name.
It thrashed against the weight of coming night,
A heart too frail to bear the world’s decay;
I spoke soft lies and tried to still its fight,
Yet felt its final tremble slip away.
The dog, the fire, the laughter far and thin,
The hollow throb of rotors overhead—
All spun around the silence sealed within
My cupped, unwilling hands that cradled dead.
No God, no fate, no mercy heard its call;
I was the one who bore the weight of fall.
STENOIMPERIUM 