Welcome to Gaia! ::

It's been a morbid fascination of mine since early last school year. A small bird that had perched outside the window of one of our rear stairwells dropped dead one day, unbeknownst to me. Actually, I had never seen the bird before, but one day, while walking up to one of my sophomore classes, I believe it was physics, I noticed a strange lump outside amongst the leaves at my eye level. I didn't really stop to invesitgate the crime scene, but my keen sense of sight and recognition immediately revealed to me the corpse of a small aviary creature...well former aviary creature.

At first, I was overcome with that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and the cold sweat that fills my body when I encounter death either head on or in my head. I didn't bother to stop, instead fleeing up the rest of the stairs to enter Intermediate Physics and worry about the momentum involved in elastic collisions. The thought must have satiated for the moment because I didn't start clinging on to my friend, then more of an annoyance, who sat in front of me during those periods and kept turning around during class. But as I passed by the doors that lead to the stairwell, I bit my bottom lip to keep from crying and moved forward.

You see, I've always had this horrible fear of dying, but mostly of dying before I felt that I lived a full life. I've also had fears of my body, what would happen when I left it? And now I saw this young looking, small and insignificant bird, laying amongst the crinkled leaves on the roof outside the window. I felt a pang of compassion for the small creature, knowing now that the carcass was to do nothing but rot, not even in the ground, but on the gravel roof. I considered a burial for a second, but then the sealed windows assured me that I was not going to crawl out to get it. So I let it rot. It was there all through fall of 2004, and into the winter, it had decomposed beyond recognition of what it truely was. And that's when it began. I started taking the stairwell at every opportunity, just to watch the creature slip away into nothing but a memory. It was slow, but eventually the feathers flew away, rodents and other birds scampered away with a nice dinner that probably tasted like chicken.

In the winter, a blanket of snow covered the roofs of the school, including the one that housed my oh so Poe-esque pet. The pure white snow that I loved so much to watch as the crystals sparkled was now my savior. I could no longer see the object of my psychotic affections, and I was freed of my fixation, or so I thought. I believed that the wet powder that is crystalline water would surely rid the pebbled roof of my stare and the corpse forever. But I was wrong, on both accounts.

My fascination only grew with the rising snow levels. I waited for the lump in the whiteness to smooth out, to finally amount to nothing more than a small pile of bones. But there was always that light hump, that drew my eye whenever I passed. I just couldn't stop looking at it. I waited for the snow to just rip the body to shreds. I obviously overestimate the strength of snow. I sometimes would stop in the stairs to watch out the window, peering to see if there was a ruffle of black within the white, which garnered a good amount of stares from students passing by, unaware of the secrets I possessed, the pain I held, and the darkness in my mind that nobody would expect from the over bouncy, blonde haired freak that forced people to hug her at every turn.

Eventually, the snow got so high that the bird was no match. The level smoothed out, and I was certain that I was cured. I even went a few weeks without looking out the window...much, and when I went away for Winter Break, I was free to think of more important things, like how many more times I would see the ball dropped before the world exploded, and other fascinating and fearfully thrilling conundrums. Then school started again.

The level of the snow stayed fairly even through January and February, as the winter was not done with us. But then the spring thaw, and the lump returned. By the end of March, the limp, drenched, dark feathers could easily be seen. The bird was nothing like a bird anymore. In fact, it was merely more than a wing and a joint, and to any other passersby, it would appear like a wet stick. In fact, I almost mistook it for just that the day back from President's Day weekend. I thought Well look, a stick has replaced my baby. Then I saw the white bone of a wing joint and was filled with both agony and relief. So it wasn't gone, but that also meant that it was still there. And so my curiosity lingered, and wouldn't let me rest until school ended in mid June.

I left the school for the last time as a sophomore, with the thought of the bird only a small memorial in the back of my mind. I didn't even remember it over the summer. Yes, I was free, and surely with all the rain and heat, the object of my hatred and desire, my paranoia and love would be gone and I would mourn silently for a day before moving on.

But when I returned...there it was. The same familiar wing that I had come to fear and respect. Damn, the thing had stamina. And so I began my career as an upperclassman. It was horrible, truely. My physics class is now situated right next to my old room, and so I use the same stairwell to get there. But I've learned to control myself. Now I continue, and I only cast a sideways glance at my friend before walking on and learning about circuitry. Maybe it will be gone by the time I graduate, maybe not, but what I do know is that there's no escaping it. What is it? Hell if I know, my concentration just flew out the window.