The Secret of Wings

Guitar strings. Unmistakable G-chord brightness, plucked with expert fingers, ring in church bell clarity across the darkness. Sting awake my foggy senses. I look up from my hands, from my bench, an unintended temporary nest. A place to rest and ride out my bad decisions. I recognize “Blackbird” by the Beatles. I don’t like this intrusion when I’m doing my best to numb my broken feathers. 

Buskers are just beggars with baggage. And it's much too late to catch the crowds. The glimmer of lovers and hard sparkle of the laughing packs of teenagers have all vanished. Carousel lights extinguished, ferris wheel and arcade games stand still. Pacific Park on the Santa Monica Pier feels more like a shipwreck. Only a few abandoned souls haunt the wreckage now. No dollars to spare. We are hustlers or hunted. Or hollowed out. Soon, the heavy blue moon, the last one of the year will go, too. Loss is nothing new. 

The guitar chords continue their dance across the creeping mist shrouding my personal shipwreck. The notes are a playful counterpart to the cutting lyrics. The song is a masterpiece in its simplicity. A composition constructed of universal bitter sweetness, desperate hope with damaged wings. A song for all suffering. 

But I’m in no mood for its holy directives. I want it to stop. I inhale deeply, in through my nose, a faint hope that the chilly sea air will help me sober up a bit. Instead, I’m assaulted with skunky cannabis smoke wafting from a shabby gathering of tents down by Colorado Street that mixes with the stench of piss and the lingering greasy perfume of fried churros and funnel cakes. I stand, wobble a little with my foot half asleep, test if my hazy internal GPS can orient toward the music.

A weathered alto, voice scarred and polished, invokes the first verse. They sing the lyrics, a quiet command that startles my anger. Each note is delivered with raw beautiful anguish. I step in the direction of the pier’s end. My fists loosen just a bit, memory flashes to my own fingers dancing to the chord progressions I used to know long ago. My brow softens as the verse starts to work its way in. 

The broken part in the song comes easy for me. It’s the learning to fly that cripples a person. Seems damn near impossible after I crashed at the edge of a hurricane. Washed up from the bottom of the storm surge. And stayed here since last year. Lost the point. Lost my job. Lost my love. Lost my mind. This in-between limbo of endings and possible beginnings has got me frozen helpless. Constant: need for perfection, fear of failure. Drive: at breakneck speed toward everyone else’s dream but my own. I am dead weight. 

Now it’s the last blue moon of the year. And I’m minding my own business. Really focused on upping my wallowing game. Getting super comfortable in my self pity like a familiar dent on a worn mattress. Then you show up. And I’m not talking about you, disrespectful busker, with your self righteous melody, interrupting my important work trying to sober up so I can drive home. No. 

I’m talking about Chad. This boy I barely know ruins it all by having the audacity to show up in my life with a real tragedy. Why were you even body surfing in the first place? Don’t you know the Pacific tricks you into her waters, and then when you’re not looking, slams you with surf. Well, you know now. Because she tricked you and broke your neck yesterday. So this morning, I have to meet my friend at the airport, who also happens to be your mom, who lives all the way across the country. It was hard enough for your mom to leave you here to start college. And now, your mom can’t leave you alone in the ICU because no one’s quite sure if you can breathe on your own. 

I tried to survive that scene. Honestly, I did. The ICU minutes dragging by. I tried to be brave while the nurses tether your hands to the bed. You chew and buck at the plastic mouthpiece connected to the air tube in your chest. A young wild stallion chomping at the bit for the first time. Refusing to be broken.

When the tide of the ICU team rolls out, the hard silence of the truth remains. Your mom gasps for the air that you can’t reach on your own. 

“I’m sorry I can’t stay,” I say. 

What do they expect? I can’t even tend to my own broken wings. I don’t even know if my wings are broken or if I ever had wings to begin with. And that’s how I wound up here. A bit of a drunken mess on Santa Monica Pier ready to punch a busker if that’s what it takes to bring back the silence.

I walk toward the music, stumbling on the uneven wooden planks that cling to each other above the rolling rumble of the Pacific. The waves offer up a rough distant rhythm. I don’t remember seeing anyone with a guitar. I don’t remember seeing.  

When I reach the squared-off end of the pier, the shepherd’s-crook-shaped street lamps still hold a glow. I make out a lone silhouette, their back to the surf, singing and playing to no one. Dreadlocks coil and shine against the midnight moonlight. A blonde and battered acoustic guitar hangs below their chest, looks like it was beaten into submission until it could deliver the perfect pitch now conjured from calloused fingertips. Chin’s tilted up, eyes closed, white teeth flash between full lips. They sing to the moon.  

Something warm brushes my heart and tickles that hollow space between my shoulder blades. I wonder: 

What am I waiting for? Can the lost still learn to fly?

They open their eyes and sing. To me. 

Into the light…

When I look into those round black eyes, I feel, almost hear, a small pop in my forehead, like how your ears pop when you climb, like something’s being pried wide open. That rusty cage of my brain that’s been keeping the blackbirds of my sorrow and my soul hostage all these days. Months. Years. The tidal wave of something higher hovers above. The levee holding my loss, all that’s lost, breaks. Washes over me. My tears blur the singer backlit by the last blue moon of the year. A wind rushes up from the ocean. I’m certain I see the spreading of black wings. 

They sing. I sing. 

To arise…

That hollow space between my shoulder blades starts to flutter just a little, growing with a soft glow, reaching across my back and chest. Stretches out like…

I feel I understand. We are all at once sufferer and savior. Dark and light. The black and the bird. 

And even when we aren’t sure where or how we lost our wings. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is if we show up anyway. And sing.