#26.3

DECORATORS WE'RE EATING TODAY

These days, I've had to look after everything around the house and take care of my mother until she recovers from her surgery. As a result, I've not been able to spend nearly enough time with you.

Last night (more so in the morning), I had what I inevitably want to call the worst dream of my life—though I'm sure there must've been plenty just as bad as this one, but... who cares. In it, I had lost you. Not to death seen with my own eyes (I think), but you'd flown away. The setting kept shifting and none of it really made sense, but those are only technicalities—who cares. The feeling, on the other hand, was entirely real. That's what made it so scary. I woke up from the dream in tears, runny nose, hard to breathe, and it took several, excrutiating minutes to realise it wasn't true. Until it at last hit me that you were indeed still here, resting, tucked away inside your covered cage. You had to be (and I only put it this way because the same dread inevitably welcomes me every day).

Still, during the dream and then in the first few moments of waking up, the feelings of loss and grief were painfully real. In body as in mind. Now that the day has come and gone, I'm realising that this must've been, without a doubt, a foretaste, a glimpse into the one-day reality of having lost you.

It's late now. I should've put you in your cage for the night a while ago, but I won't find it in me to let go of you just yet. Cradled in the palm of my hand, warm, relaxed, asleep, only to open an eye and peek back at me when my thumb stops caressing your tiny little head, expecting more. You've been like this a while, an hour maybe. The palm of my hand as well as the underside of your body have grown a little damp from the closed contact, and I can already smell from here the distinctive smell that emanates from your body after it's been warmed.

And then I was looking at you and tears started burning my eyes. I looked at you, truly looked at you, and my heartbeat quickened almost painfully, as it hit me—something that I've known for a long time, but maybe because of that dream and what it made me experience, the realisation struck me all over, an overwhelming emotion: I have already met the love of my life in you. There won't be any more after. I have found the ultimate form for me. I love you more than anything, and it's the easiest thing I have ever done. It doesn't sound all that serious when I say outloud that this little bird is my soulmate, as close to one as I ever believed there could be.

That's why——