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"Palm-sized and fledgling, a beak
protruding from the sleeve, I
have kept my birds muted
for so long,"
he’s starting to understand, about the birds. they’ve burrowed under his skin, like maggots, except sharper, beaks pointed claws jagged, stabbing into him, digging to get out every minute of every second of every day.
maybe this is a family affliction, after all. he should’ve asked grace, when he still could, but he hadn’t realized yet, by then, that there were birds in his skin. he does wonder where grace kept her birds – in her hands? in her house? in her womb? maybe she buried them with her brothers, or maybe she never even noticed them at all, passed them on to her children unseen.
he does know, of course, that paul’s birds were in his brain, in his ears and his mouth, telling him things that started to mean more to him than what anyone else ever did say. paul thought they were godsent, and maybe they were – after all, how should he of all people know what god would send? maybe he does send birds to his disciples, to teach, to torture, to test their devotion. he wouldn’t know – he hasn’t been near god in an eternity. there is an ocean between him and god, and oh, he is like his maker, after all, except that they have left god behind on different shores.
his maker put his blame on god, but louis – louis knows that he’s the one who put this ocean here, and he has no choice but to carry the blame himself, no choice but to hate himself for the distance between what he is and what he thinks god would want him to be, and there are birds under his skin for it.
every death he causes and every moment of joy he feels is a new bird born unto him. he can tell them apart once they’ve grown past fledglinghood – death becomes a sharpened beak, joy a soft and heavy feather tickling from the inside. you’d think the latter would be preferable, but it's not. the weight of guilt in joy is worse, much worse, than the weight of guilt in death.
(except, of course, for the death that has buried its beak in his heart, and the death that has buried its claws in his soul, but those he has lived with for so long, they are a part of him now. unlike the others, they never fade away, stay and stay and stay, but then, they are the ones he nourishes most – how should he live without them, after all? who would he be without them?)
armand understands his affliction like no one else ever could. he has creatures inside him, too, though he has accepted his, has embraced them as a part of himself, a multifaceted symbiosis of many, humming and buzzing and stinging inside of him. louis isn’t there yet, not quite yet, but armand helps him, softens beaks and claws, lifts out the feathers and meticulously takes them apart until they are lighter, leaving only tufts of fluffy barbs for louis to carry. the birds inside louis are calmed by him, their hunger satisfied, temporarily, by the insects inside armand. perfectly matched, bird-predators and insect-prey, though of course armand’s insects are hardly defenseless creatures – equipped with poisons and venoms, deadly substances that would draw anyone who touched them without permission into death.
they fight against louis, too, but armand makes them submit, gives them over to the birds, who in turn let louis have peace for a little while as they eat into armand instead. armand has never been the sacrificial type, but he does this for louis, as he does everything for louis, and he has found that these partial deaths only increase his creatures’ hunger, and his own power with it.
this growing hunger, too, is for louis, for the times when louis prefers to let himself be consumed – the birds are also quiet when they are being eaten, once they’ve stopped fighting the relentless onslaught of rot armand sends their way, feathers and flesh and hollow bones broken down by maggots and worms and all that is inside armand. armand likes this taking, too – it leaves them inevitably and unbreakably intertwined in a cycle of digestion; eating and being eaten, the other and the self becoming only hunger and consumption, indistinguishable from one another. in devouring louis, he consumes what louis has consumed of him before, and louis does the same when he devours armand. if he replaces every part of himself with something of louis, and louis replaces every part of himself with something of armand, if they continuously devour each other, who do they become? are they still separate? does it matter?
here, in this, is balance, hunger satisfied. birds quieted. peace taken.
"Come overdue burst, come
flock, swarm, talon, and claw.
[...]
What cannot be contained
cannot be contained."