Sitting Ducks

You are finger-flossing green glass blades, sitting by my side, looking at mama ducks and papa ducks near the edge of the water. It’s a late afternoon moment. You shoot your chin towards the ducks in question. “Why don’t they fly away?” 

I dare a glimpse of the children ducks. Dots barely feathered, little pins and needles lost in a limb. They are little fills in bone holes. Heavy starvelings of flight. I change the subject with movement, turn to lay on my back, head on the spread of your lap, and watch the underside of your chin collecting sharp shadows from overhead. I pull your fingers to my stomach, lay your palm flat with my own hands into an anatomic art piece. Your other hand grabs a soil pellet absent-mindedly, then throws it in quick disgust when you look at it. 

“Those aren’t duck droppings,” I say. “They’re little pieces of aerated ground.” 

“The ground needs to breathe?”

“Absolutely. It’s what sustains these thousands of little lives,” I say, pointing to the grass. You twist a few long strands of tall grass with a twirl of your pointer finger and a crisp squeak from the pull pleases your lips into a giddy smile. It appears worm-like and delicious from my sunless angle. You watch as a few park-goers pad against the beach, and the family of ducks caution a waddle closer to the water’s edge, passing like clouds, one by one, behind a protective gray-dried log.

“They waddle away and hide, but why don’t they fly?” you ask again. 

“They prefer the ground?” I remark softly. The wind has already been tugging the sun this way and that, light teasing through the guilty clouds, and the shadows under your face are chasing away and becoming more parallel. I’m the only one that notices the shadows on your skin, from your skin, and I squeeze your flattened hand tighter to my stomach. 

“They prefer the ground?” you rhetorize. “No, I don’t think that’s it.” A single thick grass strand is in your free hand, pointer finger and thumb rolling it in thoughtful distraction. 

Now that the passers-by have passed by, the ducks have tested a walk back into the open, back to their original spot. A little closer maybe. You sigh and shift, taking your hand away from my stomach, and prompt me to sit back up by folding your knees. I pull my cardigan tight around my core, protective, and sit back into a cross-legged hunch. We watch the ducks. 

“Go! Fly away!” you exclaim suddenly, with a slap in the air, startling both I and the waterfowl into a flinch. The smaller, brown mama duck tightens a glare at you, and fluffs her tail repeatedly. No one else moves for a few seconds, almost cherishable if not for the sink of my chest. 

“Don’t scare them.” 

“Fly!” The vocal movement is not enough to push them back into a safer spot. I grab your arm but you remain unmoving. I hope that you don’t decide to tear away.

“Come on,” I say. “They can’t just fly away, babe.” 

“Why not?” 

“They have something,” I start. “They have some things holding them back.” 

“The kids?” you laugh. “The baby ducks?” 

“Yeah, I don’t think they can fly yet, or maybe it’s too hard to keep up with the parents.” 

I look to see that you are thinking, blinking eyes at the ducks, but it’s only for a glimpse of a moment. Such erratic evanescence in your expression: thoughtful at first, wrinkled brows the next, and a shift to a plastic smile. These are all the details, among others, that I always notice. 

“Isn’t it the parents’ job to ground the kids, not the other way around?” you laugh, bouncing your elbow on your knee. 

“They should take your advice, then, Papa duck,” I laugh, and take hold of your hand yet again. You gift a huff from the nose only to then slip your hand out of mine to pull some more grass from their roots. 

“Not really.” 

I am watching you pull the grass. Aggressive hands now, without pleasure, thrown blades to the side without appreciation. Sat in the middle of a half-circle of shortened grass, you rest wordless, and I can’t tell if you are stuck on a thought or stuck without. 

“You’ll be good,” I say, lightly. “You’ll be good.” 

You give a half-hearted laugh. Mocking. “Is good enough?” 

I want to answer. Enough is good, or maybe enough is the only thing. “Look, the ducks are going to nap. The papa is watching over them.” The papa is standing, staring at us, cautious black-beaded eye, while his family preen sleepily, eventually tucking their heads away from the spring sun. 

“What do you think he’s thinking?” you say. 

“The same thing as you are, maybe?” 

“No.” 

“So what are you thinking?” I sigh. I don’t look at him. I observe the papa duck. 

“I wish I had wings, I guess.” 

Details are bothersome now. Despite the early month, the sun is overwhelming and the shadows dark. Your hands are stained green, and your body fidgets beside mine. There is no more peace for the ducks now; more people have crossed their paths. A kid woke them with the last of his sandwich’s crust, and so the bird family abandoned the pebble-beach and paddle now, alarmed, in the water. 

I grip my knees to my chest, tight, thoughtless noise in mind, and my gaze follows the ducks’ trajectory away.  I feel the need to apologize, and I reach to grab your arm in desperation, but you are so far gone now. Your mind is on the horizon and you shrug my hand away without even knowing. 

“There are better things than flying away,” I say, but it’s not for you, not really. I’m holding myself so tightly now, tense. I breathe, I fight for breath. Like packed soil, with thousands of little needs for pockets of air. 

“Is there, really?” you say, distracted still. It’s rhetorical. I know this, and so I remain quiet. I fall into your pattern of distraction, watching the ducks. We are as far away as the ducks are, still paddling, chasing the horizon.