night shift / birdie.

She wants it to rain, but the sun’s been high in the sky for days. The suffocating warmth beats down on everybody below it, but people are still outside, oppressed bodies moving from place to place. At least if it rained, she’d have an excuse not to go outside. Not that she gives people excuses— they don’t ask anymore. It’s been long enough that her family is used to this new, blue version of her, so they don’t ask, and she doesn’t have to answer.

The thinner curtains are drawn, so the sun’s rays are filtered but she can still see through to the outside. She remembers the way her daughter used to sit on this same couch— her knees drawn to her chest, her elbow resting on the back of the couch, her head in her hand. She always looked so pensive, lost in thought. Birdie never knew what she was thinking, and she never asked, but she thinks she should have. She should have.

It’s too early in the day for regret, she wants to think, but her thoughts are already spiraling, and she hasn’t been good at keeping them under control lately. She thinks, I want to sleep. The soft comfort of her bed is tempting, downy quilts calling out to her like a lover left behind while the other goes to make coffee. When she’s asleep, though, she dreams, and her dreams have not been pleasant in a very long time, and she can’t bear waking up to soaked sheets one more time.

So she thinks, I want to drink, but the tight bandages around her left wrist remind her why that’s a bad idea. She’d gotten drunk the other night, too drunk, which was unlike her, and passed out while trying to go up the stairs. She came to at the bottom with a searing pain in her arm and just laid there, staring up at the ceiling, refusing to cry. The doctor said it would take around eight weeks to heal. He gave her a note for her job, which she threw away when she got home. She hasn’t worked for months. Nobody knows, because she doesn’t want them to know. If they know, then they’ll start worrying about her again, and she finally has everybody convinced that she’s doing alright.

She thinks, I should eat, but I’m afraid to cook because I’m worried I’ll throw something onto the flames and burn the house down, and I’m afraid to go outside because I’m worried I’ll reach for a Peacekeeper’s weapon, and this is so unlike me I’ve never been like this I don’t know what’s wrong but I do but I don’t but I do and I don’t want to face it and I’ve had a migraine for days but I’m afraid to take painkillers because I’m worried I’ll go to take two and end up taking the entire bottle—

She keels over the side of the couch and vomits.



Going to sleep wins.

She cleans herself up and crawls under the covers, curling into a ball like she’s a child. Her daughter used to sleep this way, always trying to make herself as small as possible, like she was trying to curl into herself and disappear. Birdie has tried, but no matter how tightly she wraps her arms around her knees, she never goes anywhere.

Sleep comes easier to her now. In the beginning, she would toss and turn for hours, laying victim to her own terrible thoughts until she finally passed out for a few hours once the sun was rising. The exhaustion built up over the past year has caught up to her, helping her succumb to sleep faster. It still comes to her in bursts interrupted by nightmares, jolting awake with a gasp on her lips, but it’s something.

She dreams of being alone. She’s alone more often than not these days, self-isolating, but in her dreams, she’s the only person left on the planet. She wanders the empty streets of Panem, climbing over the borders between districts and exploring the open forest in-between. Nobody is there to bother her, but nobody is there to love her either.

She dreams of Damaris, bruised and bloodied, standing on the front porch of her home. She’s sobbing, begging to be let inside, and Birdie is trying to get off the couch but her legs aren’t working right, so she tries to call out to her but her voice comes out silent, and then they’re both sobbing, the miserable noise echoing throughout the house.

She dreams of gouging her own eye out, digging a knife into the left socket and pulling it out with a sickening pop. When she screams, she hears Damaris scream, too.

The sheets under her are soaked through when she wakes, just as she was expecting. Her bare shoulders feel sticky against the fabric and sweat is pooling in her collarbones. She reaches her hand up to her eye, pressing down on it until her vision sparks and blurs, and then she rolls over and sighs. She misses having another body in the bed with her, somebody she could curl up against, but she figures she’d be an awful person to share a bed with in the state that she’s in.

She rolls over again. Closes her eyes.

Waits.



As she’s sitting out on the back porch that night, chewing on an untoasted slice of bread smothered with jam, she hears something scratching underneath the house. The noise is faint, and she disregards it. She’s seen raccoons and possums around here before and is content to leave them to their business. The noise continues, though, its pace getting more and more frantic, so she sets the bread down and goes to investigate.

Stuck in the latticed foundation is a kitten, small and gray, pawing at the wood as he tries to free his head. “Oh!” she says, startled at the sight of something that isn’t a possum. She kneels down in the grass, the knees of her jeans sinking into the soft dirt. When she reaches for the kitten, he starts to thrash harder, most likely afraid of the unfamiliar human hand stretching toward him, so she pulls back and waits for him to calm down, as much as he can.

She shifts, so she’s adjacent to the corner of the house, and sticks her arm through the space between where the two walls of foundation meet. Her fractured wrist aches but she figures the pain is necessary to help this poor creature. In one quick motion, she pushes the cat through with one hand and catches it in the other. She can feel his heart beating wildly inside his tiny body, so she does the only thing she can think to and holds him against her own chest, so he can feel her calm heartbeat and steady breathing. “It’s okay,” she whispers. “You’re okay, little guy. You’re okay.”

She leans against the house and holds the kitten until his heart stops racing. Once he feels relaxed, she holds him up so they’re face to face. The fur on his face is streaked with white, and his eyes are a powdery blue, watching her with a tinge of curiosity. “Hey there,” she says, and he paws at her nose. She smiles, the first time she has in days, and boops his nose too. “Does this mean we’re friends?”

She takes him inside. He prowls around the kitchen like he owns it, like he’s lived in this house his entire life. She smiles as she watches him bat at a dust bunny under the table. He seems like the happiest thing that’s been inside this house in years. She makes him a dish of water, which he happily drinks up, and then she spends a few moments staring into the fridge, trying to figure out what’s safe for cats to eat, before settling on giving him some chicken. He eats it out of the palm of her hand and it makes her so happy she wants to cry. “I’ll get you some real food tomorrow,” she tells him. “I’ll go outside and get you some food. How about that?”

I’ll leave the house tomorrow. I’ll leave the house tomorrow.

The kitten, satisfied with his full belly and new surroundings, climbs into Birdie’s lap and curls up. She stares down at him, watches the way his little body moves with every breath he takes. It’s been so long since she took care of something. She can barely even take care of herself right now. She wonders if she can take care of something else.

She runs her fingers over the soft fur of the kitten’s back, feels the rumbling of his purrs. He is so full of life for such a tiny thing. She remembers when she used to be that way, all those years ago, before things with Leland had gone sour, before her daughter had boarded that Capitol train. She used to think that she’d find her way back to her old self, but it’s been a long time since she believed that.

She thinks that that doesn’t matter anymore. She thinks that she needs to stop thinking so much. She thinks she needs to give this kitten a name.

I’ll leave the house tomorrow. I’ll leave the house tomorrow.

(She leaves the house.)