Tonight, somebody lost a bird; his bird, a broiler. His chats had taken long in coming, tightening the muscles in my face and slowing my fingers. When he came back on, I was stiff. He apologized, said it was because he was tending to his bird, which was dying. I typed Oh. I hope it's coming back. His next words were, No problems. It's now dead. It's gone. There was something about the way he said it that made me suddenly aware of my own breathing. My chest felt like it held a stone. I told him this and he asked me if it was constipation and I said no and he said maybe I needed to rest and that we could always chat later. Then, for the first time since I met him, in a country that frowns at two men getting obsessed with each other, he said I love you in a small broken voice.

I slowly dropped my phone.

Yesterday, my mum crouched next to her own bird. An adìe ìbílè, a local fowl, toughened by hard seasons. Its neck drooped and lolled like (perhaps a flu?), and I watched her fret over its coming death. She lay the moribund bird on a crate of old mineral drinks bottles. In the morning, we agreed, a funeral would come.

This morning, it was her ululations that woke me up. She was glowing anew. She was holding the hen and showing my dad, who relished her joy with her.

“What happened, Mummy?” I stood, rubbing the gunk of sleep from my eyes, unformed swirls of understanding escaping my mind's grasp.

And she showed me too, extending her hand—a fierce fluttering of wings, a lusty squawk.

I stared, lips loose. This was a bird we had given up on. It lived.

My mother's bird lived.

This night, when my lover texted me about the one that died and I dropped my phone, I thought about the elusiveness of memory, of state, how the way we hold something changes the very moment we fear its loss.

Different time, different birds.

There are a million stories of lives dropping and lives starting and lives getting picked back up. But one story that sticks about life is how we celebrate it through death. We feel the extent of life through our experiences of death. Perhaps there is no single way to live or die. No matter the kind of home bird I am during these times, I think I will just live—truly live—while I can: with a healthy squawk, and flapping wings.