{"id":4220,"date":"2022-03-02T23:45:59","date_gmt":"2022-03-02T23:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-the-words\/?page_id=4220"},"modified":"2024-07-30T19:18:23","modified_gmt":"2024-07-30T19:18:23","slug":"wordplay-with-birdie-keller","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/the-words-march-2022\/wordplay-with-birdie-keller\/","title":{"rendered":"Wordplay With Birdie Keller!"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Chlo\u00eb Moore ’24<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Birdie<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u200b\u200b<\/span>Birdie Keller is a freshman Creative Writing major from Saint Paul and Florida. She enjoys writing queer speculative fiction and fantasy, and has a pet yellow lab named Apollo.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

content warnings: alcohol addiction, child abuse, death<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

drowning<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow the fuck did I end up with a weak ass girl like you?\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was years ago. I imagine now he\u2019d be asking a far different question. If he was asking anything at all.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nineteen:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

His hair splays out on the grass like fallen leaves in a still pond. It\u2019s summer, and we\u2019re hot, the two of us. <\/span>Boyfriend<\/span><\/i>. Did I ever think such a thing would be mine?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m in Florida now, and I like it, but it can do this, suck you so dry that you don\u2019t have enough moisture to spit, despite humidity heavy in the air. I want to kiss him, hold him against me like a salve that can fix the heat cracking me deep inside. I want him to make me believe in love. But we\u2019re two baking bodies, sweaty in the sun, and there isn\u2019t an inch of room in the fiery air.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

High noon, and nowhere to go.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born broken, drowning in my own lungs, all blue and yellow. Prophetic, my father later called it.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mother wanted a strong child. One to love in all the soft ways she could not with my father. One to stand up to his rages. One who could make her smile.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father wanted a son.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One frigid winter day, snow piling against the windows, he showed me his military medals from the second world war, all gleaming in a row.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honor to our country<\/span>, his words said. But his eyes said: <\/span><\/i>violence.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Violence.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bruises around my wrist. The way my mother flinched when he wrapped his arms around her waist.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m making you strong, he told me.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love you, he told her.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could not protect her any more than I could make him proud.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My boyfriend doesn\u2019t want to go inside. I don\u2019t ask why, don\u2019t protest when I move to stand and he pushes me back down. This is a painting, a still-life, and I don\u2019t want to shatter the peace. His profile, staring up at the endless, cloudless blue above us, is bathed in gold. His eyes are closed against the sun, and in that moment he looks like an angel, like what I used to pray to before I stopped believing in miracles at all.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five: I sit in the grass, gazing up at the stars. They are a blanket in the sky, and the cold wraps around me, a comfort. The bruise on my cheek is the first of many wounds.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mother still believes that I am strong, cradles me in her arms and murmurs a lullaby, but my father looks at me and sees the truth I hide behind a shattered mask.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eight: children spill outdoors as the world thaws, wielding sticks like swords. The violence tastes like copper on my tongue, and I do not join them.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ten: my father shows me the army\u2019s enlisting application. \u201cOne day,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twelve: I see death in person for the first time, in the face of Miss Helen. She lives two houses over. With the blue door. Her eyes are cold and her skin is ice and my father is watching, so I hold the tears inside.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, I throw them up right alongside that morning\u2019s breakfast.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Irony is a funny thing.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sixteen: It\u2019s 1967, and I\u2019m marching for freedom. Flowers adorn my hair and the banners we wave. It\u2019s like I\u2019m flying. Here are others who understand.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But hope can shatter like a dropped glass.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seventeen: Robert Kennedy is shot.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

and<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seventeen: my father kills my mother.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her body on the floor. Love is not a beautiful thing.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He turns to me at one point, nose tipped against the scorched ground, eyes chips of fallen sky. \u201cI love you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love you<\/span><\/i>. My father said that to my mother the night before she died. I heard him, the words murmured into a kiss. They sounded beautiful at the time, but now I know better. They are poison, nothing less.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a hot summer, dry summer, dead summer, and this boy just told me he loves me. I am frozen.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo <\/span>you<\/span><\/i>?\u201d In his voice is the persistence of the fearful. The ones who know what it is like to be forgotten. I know the song well.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m rotting, decaying slowly. Burning, drowning.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now his hand is around my wrist. Am I imagining the tightness of his grip? I can\u2019t breathe. \u201c<\/span>Do you?\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And here I thought that love could be for me.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah,\u201d I say.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGood.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We lie there.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t be like my mother, or myself at seventeen. Silent and quiet until my last, until it\u2019s too late.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sit up. I would kill for ice water, but the only things in this swampy wasteland are parched mouths and dried-out dreams.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet\u2019s get a drink,\u201d I say.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He doesn\u2019t go to jail. Because it looks like an accident. Because I\u2019m too afraid to say a thing. I live with him for a year. I\u2019m not eighteen yet. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019d have the courage to leave regardless.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I try to hide the simmering rage the way I hide the hurt, beneath long sleeves and a placid expression, but it\u2019s too bright. The injustice of it all eats away at me.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t look at him without seeing her blood on his hands. Can\u2019t breathe without dark smoke eating at my lungs.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then: a Budweiser tipped in his hand, drunkenness smeared across his mouth. He slurs, \u201cShe had it coming. Useless bitch.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s it.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He wants me to be strong? To savor the taste of pain?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fine.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will watch him burn.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And after, I hitch my way across the country. Live where I want, eat when I can. It tastes like freedom and sweat. In the beginning, I saw my mother\u2019s cracked skull dripping beer in my dreams, but those nightmares have long since faded, leaving behind only the sour taste of a girl who no longer believes that love is real.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally free. Beholden to no one.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except\u2014<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except when I meet him, a beautiful boy framed in sunlight, a Florida tan on his skin, smiling at me over his book, I wonder if perhaps he is everything I thought could never be.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a fake ID. (For hitching purposes; I <\/span>don\u2019t drink<\/span><\/i>.) I buy a six pack, and we sit outside on the scorched parking lot pavement. He drinks one and, over the course of hours, another. The smell and sight and sound of it slurping down turns my stomach. I push that aside.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he finishes his second, I silently hand him a third. He drinks four in total.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We walk to the lake then under the darkening sky, leaving behind the empty six pack rings. Fog and mist puff around our feet. He sways, staggers, leans on me for support. Completely plastered. Revulsion rises in my throat, but I force it down. This will be over soon.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe I\u2019m plastered too (I\u2019m not, I <\/span>can\u2019t be<\/span><\/i>, I\u2019ll be just like <\/span>him<\/span><\/i>) because nothing makes sense. His hair is wet against my fingers when I brush it away from his face, and his eyes are all hazed over with drink.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wonder if I\u2019m dreaming this, dreaming him. He looks like a mirror, or perhaps a window to something long past.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t let it. I can\u2019t let him.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I laugh, hug him, ignore the way my skin crawls. All it takes is a shove, a shifting of balance. He laughs too, until he is tipping off the dock, plunging into the lake.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shouts. Thrashes. Gargles.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silence.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bubbles rise from the depths like ash raining from the sky.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sit and watch and\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t know.<\/span> That\u2019s what I tell them, when they ask me why I didn\u2019t stop him, didn\u2019t realize that a boy that full of alcohol wouldn\u2019t end well in the water. I didn\u2019t know that he was drunk, I don\u2019t even know where he got the beer.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t tell them that death follows me like a ghost.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, I tell them that he could swim. Damn well. Florida boy.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They ask: Were you drunk too, miss? <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know<\/span><\/i>. <\/span>That\u2019s what I tell them, when they ask why my father is nothing more than a cracked, cooked corpse. I don\u2019t even know how the fire started.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t tell them that it felt like a dream, the spare beer from the counter in one hand, the match in the other. I don\u2019t tell them that my father\u2019s final, surprised look when everything shattered and roared to life felt like a victory. <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead I tell them that I loved my father. That I\u2019m sorry he\u2019s gone.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They ask: Are you drunk, miss?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course not.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because that is what you are supposed to say.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a thousand little things, really, you\u2019re <\/span>supposed <\/span><\/i>to say. When your boyfriend drowns in a lake, when your family home burns to cinders, and you are the only witness, when you are a girl with no history they can track who hitchhiked to Florida, a girl whose arms are mottled with bruises and old scars.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When all this is true, you are not supposed to tell the truth. Not when the truth is what it is, and the <\/span>world<\/span><\/i> is what it is.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some reasonable answers, instead:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t drink.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t know he would drown.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t start the fire.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t drink.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He could swim.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I loved him.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t drink.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sorry he\u2019s gone.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

(If I drank, I\u2019d be just like <\/span>him<\/span><\/i>.)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sorry.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t drink.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somewhere, the lies become something else. Maybe now they are for you.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t know, you say again, and the flashing sirens beat out the heart of the truth.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Were you drunk?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course not.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You lie until you believe it.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

_________________________________________________________________________<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Words<\/span> thanks Birdie Keller for sharing her wonderful work with us!<\/span><\/i><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Chlo\u00eb Moore ’24 \u200b\u200bBirdie Keller is a freshman Creative Writing major from Saint Paul and Florida. She enjoys writing queer speculative fiction and fantasy, and has a pet yellow lab named Apollo. content warnings: alcohol addiction, child abuse, death drowning \u201cHow the fuck did I end up with a weak ass girl like you?\u201d […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":913,"featured_media":0,"parent":4201,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4220","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/913"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4220"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7127,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4220\/revisions\/7127"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/the-words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}