Is this a bad omen?

writing with the birds

Hello!

If someone who knows about signs from the universe or symbols or omens or something would like to tell me why I keep having weird experiences with birds, that would be amazing. Please leave a comment with any explanation that might help! Anything!

A few days ago, I was sitting on the couch doing some work when there was a loud bang of a noise. I looked out the window to the balcony, and there was a hawk staring at the ground. On the ground was a pigeon squirming in the final moments of its life. I watched the hawk. The hawk watched the pigeon. The hawk looked like it wanted to eat the pigeon. I made a sudden movement. The hawk flew away. The pigeon took its final breath. There was a freshly dead bird on our balcony. I sent Adam approximately fifteen texts to find out when the hell he was going to be home because I had a strange non-emergency but also rather urgent issue! He said: walking down our hallway now! Why is he always so CLOSE when these things happen but not like THERE, WITH ME? (The real question is why do these things happen to me!!! But still!)

It's only been a few months since a bird zoomed into our apartment, swooped around the kitchen, and zoomed back out into the evening air. Adam was in the other room and by the time he responded to my SCREAMING, the bird was gone!

I also spot dead birds very often. Adam and I go for a lot of walks. I've lost count of how many times I've said: look! Or: watch out! and pointed to a bird carcass. (We live in an area with a lot of birds, so it kind of makes sense now, but this happened before we moved into an apartment near a river! It's way too frequent! Like, very often!) I've even spotted little tiny featherless baby birds splayed on the ground before! It’s horrible!

Having a hawk try to eat a pigeon on our balcony crossed a line I didn't know existed. I never could have prepared for this! At least the bird swooping into the apartment was something we joked about happening one day! (I didn't expect it to actually happen, but still!)

Am I cursed? What is happening? Can I undo the curse? Will birds (dead and alive) be finding me for the rest of my life? What's going to happen next? Is there an attack in my future? Should I worry about this? WHY?

Anyway! We just got home from a concert - we saw Annie DiRusso. It was very good! Our favorite song off her album is called Back In Town. The whole album has this kind of road trip-esque vibe, which felt very nostalgic for me. (Can you be nostalgic about a time in the recent past? I don't know! But I was/am!)

For a long time, Adam and I were doing frequent road trips across the Midwest (after doing the long road trip from California to Kansas), and it felt like it might never end, like we could be in constant transit. Like we would blend into the background of the subtle hills and grass and stop being real people. I wrote a lot of poems during that time (what else was there to do besides jot things down on my phone?) and have published a few of them. Two of my favorite poems I've ever written started in my notes app as Adam drove through long rows of nothingness. Sometimes we had very long and meaningful conversations on those drives. Instead of making us turn to nothing, I think those moments of stillness (mental stillness, physical movement) gave us something we didn’t even realize at the time.

(And sometimes we saw hawks during our drives! So, technically, these two ideas are connected!)

Anyway, we drove from Kansas City to Lawrence, the town we lived in before Kansas City, which is like 45 minutes away, for the concert, and on the way home, I was staring out at the road and thinking: maybe all I need to do to feel more connected to poetry again is convince Adam to go on more drives so I can stare out the window. This isn't the most effective plan in the world, but we have at least one road trip home to Indiana planned, so! There's hope! For now, a poem draft:

YOU KNOW WHAT I'M ASKING

I don't understand why we can't be one person.
What is a body, anyway? A silence 
if we let it gather. Glass breaks eventually.

I like to talk in whispers on our side
of the table. I ask: are you obsessed with me?
like a Catholic prayer: the repetition. 

I ask again on another drive with a cornfield.
I say: do you think this is a metaphor?
Distance as love or miles like years.

How many times can love be compared? 
It's never to the roadkill stretched and skidded
or a half-burnt down farmhouse.

But what is love if its only beauty or pain?
What about the aftermath?
You know I'll still love you if it falls apart.

At the concert, Annie says: I love pain
as it's settling in. You go to the bathroom
during the slowest song. 

I keep my hands clasped and sway left to right
and think about the healing of wounds.
Is everybody trying to cover something up?

We find unusual things at thrift stores
and set them out, perched like grand offerings.
Does the mean something?

Is there reverence in spilled over collections
or is it another form of noise?
I could keep going like this forever,

asking questions until you want me to stop,
until you beg for the light to turn off
and I say: but what do you think it'll be like?

And you know what I'm asking.