Feathered Up

This morning I remembered the bird who nested in the rafters outside my office door last spring, constructing her home with the husks of ornamental grass, the shreddings of twigs, a line or two from a newspaper page. The bird and I never bothered to trouble the other, and soon she did not even mind my coming and going, so that I could open the door, look up, call out, and she'd stay just where she was, minding her eggs.

Once the chicks were born, she yielded to instinct—feeding, protecting, giving lessons in flight or, at least, some sort of birdly encouragement. And then one day I opened the door and a chick looked up from its perch upon my welcome mat, curious and unafraid. It posed for portraits, greeted my father. By afternoon it was gone. I never saw it again, or if I did, it had long since changed its coat of feathers.

I lived this past week inside the shell of an intense and finally empowering novel revision. I slept for the first time last night. This morning I wake to dim light, a soggy garden, an understanding that the novel is not mine anymore; it has somehow completed itself. We make and shape our books and then, of necessity, we set them apart. They will fly or not without us in the end. We feather them up and watch the skies.