Birdy

shared reality.
     
    When I wake that morning, I’ve done it again. I’m covered with jit, my sheets, my pajamas. I wash everything so my mother won’t find out. I’ve got to do something.
    I go down to Cobb’s Creek with a long stick. They’re floating by in that creek all the time. There must be toilets flushing into the creek, there just couldn’t be that many lovers along the banks. I get one in good shape, wash it out in the creek first, then take it home and wash it again. I turn it inside out. I slip it on and when it’s on, I can hardly feel it. After that, I sleep with that condom on. I fill it almost every night during those first mad weeks when Perta and I are so deeply involved with each other, when all the dreams are devoted to passionate flight, singing, dancing, and overwhelming culminations.
    Now, I’m separating the dream from the day better. Especially in the dream, I hardly remember that I am a boy. I am almost completely bird. As boy I’ve wired a nest into the cage with Perta the daytime bird. In the night, Perta and I are building our nest. Strangely enough, Perta, alone, in the days shows interest in the nest also. I give her burlap and she starts building. This isn’t uncommon. Sometimes a female without a male will build a nest during the nesting season.
    In the dream it is such fun building the nest. Perta does most of the work and she’s a fine engineer. It’s a combination of weaving or knitting and construction work. Mostly I’m bringing up materials. Perta is meticulous and ingenious with her nest building. I admire it even more as bird than I did as a boy.
    Every day when I go out to feed and take care of the birds, I check on the nest Perta is building in the flight cage. It’s exactly like the nest Perta is building in the dream, except the dream nest seems to be slightly more advanced than the nest in the cage. Could the dream be getting ahead of real life? I’m beginning to think I don’t know what’s real anymore.
    When the nest is finished, Perta tells me she thinks she is going to lay the egg that night. For me as boy, the dream nights are the day. In the real day the thinking of the dream dominates me. I’m thinking all the time of our egg to come. It’s hard for me to realize that Perta the bird is asleep while I’m dreaming, and Perta the dream is awake while Perta sleeps. Are they dreams to each other? Is Perta right? Do birds not dream? Don’t they ever dream themselves out of the cage?
    That night the egg is laid. I sit beside Perta. She tells me she can feel the egg becoming inside her, how the shell is hardening and starting to move out into the world.
    She asks me to sing to her so the egg will come more easily. I begin to sing softly, absently, not knowing what my song will be. I sing about how we are there, together, living as one, in life just begun. Being the father of an egg is so far from what being a boy is.
    The sky is just lighting in the morning when Perta tells me the egg has come into the nest. She lifts herself carefully so I can see. It is beautiful. She leaves the nest and I lower myself slowly over it. The warmth of Perta’s body comes from the egg, from the nest, through my feathers to my breast. I hold myself still and this warmth goes through me. I try to feel what Perta has felt, is feeling. Perta leans over the nest and feeds me. Then she squats beside the nest and cups herself to receive me.
    Both Perta in the dream and Perta in the cage lay four eggs. Perta’s eggs in the cage are as lovely as ours. I leave the eggs in the nest with Perta the bird. I don’t want to take any chance that the eggs in my dream will turn into marbles and also I know that Perta the bird’s eggs must be sterile. If I know they must be sterile, there is no reason to take them out.
    I worry, as boy, that the eggs in the dream will be sterile, too. In the dream I don’t worry about this at all. I ask Perta why she has had only sterile eggs before and she tells me she was never properly fertilized. This is what I want to believe.
    Mostly, I want our eggs to be fertile. I wish it as hard as I can. With my binoculars, I watch the birds in the breeding cages as the eggs are hatched. I get it deeply printed into my mind. I want to know exactly what to do as a bird. I want to power my babies into this life.
    The other flight cage is getting filled with young birds. From the warbling going on all the time, it seems there’s a good proportion of males.
    I