The bird wakes me up between 5:02 and 5:13 every morning, and if I find it I’m going to shoot it. I haven’t shot anything before but I don’t know where else to look for peace. Well what kind of bird? you’d ask if you were here, as if I’m an expert. As if you are. And I would say you know what, it could be a phoenix with feathers that are literally ablaze and wingtips dipped in 24 karat gold—it will not shut the fuck up, and I’ve been awake all night again, and I need some fucking sleep. I wouldn’t say it exactly like that of course. We’d have a kindergartener by then, watching, always watching, even when we think she’s not.

I could maybe understand if it had hatchlings to protect. But I’ve looked. It doesn’t. There are no predators, no eggs, and still it stirs before sunrise and shrieks into the air at nothing. If you were here I’d roll over and murmur something about no eggs. Oh great, just what we need, you’d say. Another bird metaphor. And I would touch your shoulder and tell you if you’d actually read those books you used to keep stacked on your bedside table, you’d know another one is okay, that all the stories have already been written, so. Too late.

Ear plugs, white noise, insulated windows: pointless. Each morning I yank our curtains open to scan the trees for something hiding. The yard feels as deserted as this house, not much inside except my drawers of rumpled, re-worn clothes and your piles of paintbrushes and the mural you started in her room. You quit mid-jungle. An elephant trunk half-curled, a lion missing its mane. You could have finished the macaw, at least—you left its outline soaring on the ceiling, abandoned its potential—but I shouldn’t be surprised. When I was little I brought a nest into the house, and although my father helped me put it back, in the same spot, on the same branch, the mother never returned. Sometimes they just give up, he said, if they fear there has been too much damage.

If she were here I know one night I’d tuck her in and she would ask questions I’m not sure how to answer, like why are some feathers so small and how many worms can a beak carry and where does she go when we can’t hear the song? I would research all her invisible inquiries, study bird calls until I found a match, so the next night I could kiss her forehead and pull the blanket up to her chin and say, California Towhees have strong legs and love to eat berries, just like you. Their babies are also born with their eyes closed. Okay so maybe not shoot it, I’d come downstairs and tell you. Just, you know. Scare it a little.

This is the morning I rip the curtains open and there it is, as if all it wanted was to be given a name. Grayish and ghostly and so alive. Perched at the very top of a broken swing set the previous owner left behind, above the rusted chains and all those silken spiderwebs. It cocks its head and rises, hovers, flies away.

I spooked it, and I sort of wish I hadn’t, but the next day at 5:04 a.m. it forgets, or remembers and still feels safe, or remembers and comes back and comes back and comes back. The notes aren’t even beautiful. Staccato and shrill: chirp, chirp, and then a series of them, chirpchirpchirpchirpchirp, suddenly frantic. The sound of a siren or squealing tires. The warning right before the ruin.

Well it’s no phoenix, you would say. It’s practically a house wren. Something common, something plain and ordinary, see? But there’s nothing ordinary about it, the way a creature who could go anywhere in the sky wakes up every morning and stays here with me.

(winner of the Editors’ Prize in Fiction for issue 40)