I was never a morning person. I’d cling to my fur blankets and Egyptian cotton, pulling them up over my head at the first hint of daylight. I’d inhale the newfound darkness of my fuzzy veil and the plush promise of more precious slumber and moan myself back to sleep. If I’d had it my way, I’d wrap my consciousness up like a present and gift myself to the moon to be unwrapped every evening under its worthy gleam.

I sigh at the luxurious memory. It is an ache in my body like a phantom limb, though its weight holds nothing against the absence of freedom. The absence of my Matilda. How quickly grief can scar when at the very bottom of Maslow’s pyramid. Her absence once a bleeding artery, life itself being drained from my body, is now skin healed over in comparison to the fresh wounds of waking to another day.

Here, there is no such promise, no such comfort, no such cause for a moan of any sort of pleasure. There is no Matilda, and to hell with Maslow’s hierarchy. No, I was never a morning person, but here, I have no choice.

I celebrate my freed hands, this moment of brief liberation, this hour we are given each day, lifting a cigarette to my lips and inhaling. Some might enjoy the early morning hours with an inhalation of fresh air, but I choose to greet the moment with a toke towards death. I used to find solace in many things – her lips, her hair, her hips – and now I find solace in a habit I never had. But when you are caged like an animal, you find yourself searching for gratitude in the minute, though I knew in what was left of my heart, this was a habit she would wholeheartedly despise.

It's a slow death you’re after… I could hear her scoffing.

I exhale, and the thought that I can never let die arises, a plead primal and yearning throughout my fibrous being: What did I do so wrong to deserve such imprisonment? Loving a woman? A perfect, soft-skinned and beautiful woman, so soft-skinned and tender like my own body? The likeness of our shapes so well matched that it frightened those who couldn’t stand the sight of such perfection.

Oh, Tildy, my heart croons. How it used to croon so painfully, and now simmers lifelessly at my remaining fire, trying so desperately to keep the aroma of our love alive. I cannot forget you. I will not let our love boil out.

Matilda would have loved it here. Would have found a way to adore a condemned life and make it wholesome and meaningful. Would have loved to wake up early and breathe in the air with me, holding hands, not giving a damn what the world thought of us.

She used to say things all the time like, How could this be wrong when our hands fit so perfectly together? I, the paranoid of the two, admired her confidence in us, her stubborn defiance against the law. I never knew what she was going to say or do, but I always held my breath before she did.

Above me is an unending blue, the only cloud is the one bellowing from my lips. The moon still graces the sky, hovering over my head like a crown, as if the people who push the moon around up there have fallen asleep and forgotten to put an end to yesterday. Must be October. Almost her birthday. The days do run together here, though the sun threatens to force a new one, illuminating the bark of the redwoods that encircle us. For a prison, it’s a beautiful place, despite the intimidation our location is intended for. They figured no one would be dumb enough to try to escape into a remote and endless forest.

It takes me back to the one time I let Matilda convince me to wake up before the PM hours. She wanted to show me what I was missing, hoping I would see the inspiration she saw when she took her morning cup of coffee and a notebook out to the porch to greet the peeking horizon. That woman could be inspired by anything. She could be inspired by the sun simply rising across the vines, casting its light on each individual leaf or grass needle in its path. A bird flying from ground to treetop, acorn treasured in its beak, would be a poem unto itself to my Tildy. These early hours, when dawn had gone to rest but the late morn had barely opened its eyes, she would let the clock go and live by the unravelling moment around her. Inspiration came to her like she wasn’t the sin the world made her out to be. Her determination to love the world and to simply be happy was like none I’d seen beyond the naivete of childhood. It gave me hope, for me and for us.

A hope that was crushed, stifled, and shoved into a black sac in the dead of night. A home invasion that was legal, to punish a love that was illegal. I can still feel her grip tighten around my waist as they dragged her off of me. They were so swift, tearing our dreams away from us so fast that we had no time to scream, only a single second for the realization to solidify the horror of our situation. There were no questions fluttering through our heads, no reasonable need to call for help. The ones who could help us were the ones ripping us from our home. The ones who could help us wouldn’t help people like us.

Our friends, our true friends who knew the truth, tried to protect us. They warned us: The birds are watching. It’d sounded preposterous, even in a world where something as natural and humane as loving another person was deemed a legal matter. Would the government go to such great lengths, literally creating flocks of security to maintain the society they believed so perfect?

In the faint light of a street lamp casting stripes across our bedroom floor, I got my answer. How else would they have found us? I saw my Matilda, faceless beneath a blank bag, reaching out for me, for one last touch of the life we had together. No, there was no confusion, not even the question: Why? We’d stopped asking that decades ago. We knew what was happening, and we knew why, even if it made no sense to us. All we could do was reach out one last time in an effort to convince ourselves that this was, in fact, worth it.

At one point, I would have said: Of course. Of course, our love was worth it. She was worth it. My Matilda was worth everything.

But, now, with only a cigarette to fill the absence in my hands, and the resonating echo of a bullet gone off replaying in my head like a marble going round on a metal track, I do not know if any of it was worth it.

When they find people like us, especially when they find people like us together - and happy - they do not leave us with hope. They do not leave us with the distant belief that perhaps one day we could be reunited. They do not want us hanging by a thread, cradling the will to survive like a childhood blanket. Instead, they cut the cord and watch as we squirm, writhe, and wish for death, savoring our screams and watching us endure the never-ending plunge towards our own demise.

After they shot my love, the room became impossibly silent, even though I was so sure that I was shrieking. There was only darkness and forceful hands beneath the bag, but even then, it was like the entire world was moving in slow motion as they pushed and shoved me out into the bitter cold. The silent vibration in my ears, my mouth stretched open, my hands shackled behind me. All of the sound gone, like someone had accidentally clicked the mute button.

They knew what they were doing. They had done it so many times. They stole my will to live and tossed a lifeless heartbeat into a sleek, metallic van.

“Oh, Tildy,” I unleash a cry at the sound of my voice baring her name. It’s been an uncountable number of days since I’ve said it.

I hear a guard off in the distant, grunting in disgust at my sorrow, as if I should have no right to that, either. Perhaps, he is right – what right do I have to be here without Matilda?

My cigarette is mostly ash now, and I flick off the waste before taking another inhale. I hear the bell dinging, an indication to expect rough hands shackling me up and dragging me inside for the remainder of the day. I discard the remaining filter and stomp it out on the concrete. I brace myself for the abruptness of touch, pulling my shoulders to my ears, squeezing my eyes shut. Each time I am brought from place A to place B, I am reliving my own death.

I hear the footsteps. I hear the heavy breathing – at least here I have the auditory warning. I hear the clinking of chains. I hear a bird chirping…so very close…

A bird!

My eyes spring open. Did my ears deceive me? I cast a wide net, scanning the yard before me. It chirps again, and I find it, so close, right at my feet, its head tilting from side to side, assessing me.

The birds are watching.

My enemy before me does not present like an enemy. But could it be? There is something captivating about it, nonetheless, as if I finally understand Matilda’s fascination with mundane creatures, as if the poem is unraveling before me, a message from my past.

But how did it get in here?

The bird chirps, and hands are tight on my shoulders, clenching around my wrists. Chains rattling, clicking open, and clicking closed. An acorn drops from the bird’s beak, but it does not frighten into flight. It stares, its beady eyes on my shackled body.

As if the most magical object on the planet, I whisper, wide-eyed and manic: “An acorn!”

The solitude, the imprisonment, the grief, it is finally warping my mind, twisting it like silly putty, and there is no will in my body to stop it from doing so. Before me is no bird, no treacherous enemy of the skies, but it is my Matilda, come back for me!

The guard is pulling me, dragging me away. The space between me and my love is growing. I am being torn away from her once more. “Matilda! My love!” I screech, desperate and hungry. I have no arms to reach out to her, but I try, thrusting my body towards the ground.

Concrete pierces into my face, rips at the fabric of my knees. The pain in my body is a welcome relief from that my heart has been enduring, and I cannot let her go again. I cannot fail her once more. I am crawling, inching a painful plunge forward, rugged pebbles grating my cheeks. My teeth threaten to tear into the solid ground to compensate for my useless bound arms writhing behind me. Then, there is a pressure straddling my back, a hefty weight pressing my wrists into my bottom, an ache in my shoulders.

“Rec time is over!” the guard asserts his limitless wrath, spitting at the back of my head.

My nose is one with the blacktop, squished like the last of my physical strength. There is the resonating sound, that marble going around the track, the echo of silence when the world should be loud.

How could this be wrong? Matilda wraps her hand in mine, squeezing it, and we are swinging on the porch bench, watching the darkness finally turn to light.