When birds stop reading books.

The last pages had been flipped and it read THE END.

He sat quietly on the front porch and watched as the sun danced its last dance with the mountains, he sipped his beer. The sounds of zipping zippers and moving drawers and clothes being folded only reminded him of all the times before. The times when those sounds only meant that within the next two days her car would pull back into the gravel drive and she would be crying and she would run to him and hug him and he would say things like “It’s OK” and “Let me grab your bag.”

But this time he didn’t have any care left in him and that’s why he sat on the front porch just sittin’, not really thinking about anything. This time he didn’t care to stand in the old wooden doorway to their bedroom and plead and beg and fight and strain and talk and yell. He didn’t want to have to keep a bird caged that only wanted to fly. He didn’t want to be a warden of the free.

The pages to this chapter in the book had been read and turned so many times that the words had lost all their meaning and he had finally set the book on the end table for the last time. The book was old and tattered and he was tired of having to read the yellowed pages.

She walked out of the front screen door and stood with her toes hanging over the edge of the front porch with bags in hand, just staring out, never turning her head. The car door slammed and the engine turned over reluctantly and the tires crunched over the gravel and her taillights faded away.

What do you do when one bird in the hand is not worth two in the bush? What do you do when alone means better?

He sat there with the sweat from the can seeping into his faded jeans and just rested easy knowing that the sun would set tonight and it would rise again in the morning and even if it didn’t, he had everything he needed right there in the cave of his chest.