I did not expect love to arrive the way it did. I had carried so much into my life by then, suitcases of trauma, zippers busting open. And then Tyler. A man who swore only death would part us. Our love remade me. I was certain and undiminished. Each time I looked at him I was amazed I still felt so profoundly attracted to him. A child's crayon drawing, handed off to a master artist, knitted together in flesh, just for me.

The month before I left to care for my dying father, I came to the kitchen window to find him staring out at it.

A pair of cardinals that always flew in the trees. The female was injured, on the ground, unable to fly. I watched through the glass as he slipped his fingers into gloves, walked to her twitching form, and ripped her head from her body.

When he came in, crying, he asked why god made him do that.

I was too stunned to answer his question, too busy with my own: am I the fucking bird here?

I shoved that away somewhere I couldn't reach yet.

Weeks later I returned home from my time with my dying father, a man who seemed as content as my mother to slip out quietly, talking about the weather, the grass in the yard. My mental health deteriorates around my family. I am my worst self as a baseline and on top of that, I had been managing my dad's chemo, my grief, the slow unraveling I could feel happening across every strained phone call and awkward text from the man I had built my life around.

My friends told me to wait until I got home, that things could look different up close. They were right that I couldn't see clearly. They were wrong that I wasn't seeing.

I knew. I knew. I knew.

I walked into our home and felt the separateness in the air like mustard gas. My eyes burned. My stomach churned.

Tyler had been receiving signs from the universe. All of them pointing toward leaving. He presented his findings like a lawyer before a jury. He went to the fridge, where a photobooth strip was held by a magnet, the two of us laughing, madly in love, our first year of marriage. He tossed it into my lap.

I don't look at you this way anymore. I don't love you anymore.

I thought of the cardinal. The gloves. The careful, purposeful walk across the yard.

I asked why there was no food in the house. At this his tears came forth anew as he looked me dead in the eye and told me the place I wanted Korean wings from had caught fire. Another sign. More evidence for the case he'd already decided.

The scrappy bitch who lives in the back alley of my mind peeked her head around the corner, smoking a Newport, and said: are you fucking listening to this? Did you just hear what he said?

I had married a man who killed a bird in god's name and drew the parallel line right to my feet.

I am no cardinal.

This had nothing to do with me. There was nothing I could do to stop it. I knew the man before me too well. He would not go back once his course was set. He had left long before I got home.

You need to leave, I said.

He packed a bag. Asked if hugging me would be too terrible.

My head stayed on my shoulders. My arms at my sides.

A month and a half later he filed for divorce. Claimed the twenty year old bartender he'd been on the phone with until four in the morning had nothing to do with it. Accidentally sent me screenshots proving otherwise.

A man who had no friends but me, suddenly had one of great importance.

I am no cardinal. I do not let someone walk toward me in gloves and hold still for it.

I am a crow. And crows remember every face.