This is The Parlour, a place for intimate conversation, a real-time archive, a shared diary passed between a rotating cast of queer characters every week in an attempt to capture a kaleidoscopic view of what it’s like to be a queer person right here, right now.

The cardinal who lives in my yard waits for me to refill the birdbath so he can clean up and get ready for his date. He’s part of a mated pair, and I like to joke that I need their relationship to survive for personal reasons, to show me that true love is everlasting. I’m fixated on this bird because he has a genetic anomaly. His head doesn’t look like most other cardinals. It’s flat and completely black, as though God crafted the rest of him with extreme care and then, when it came time to make the head, he got bored and just scribbled in the rest with a black Sharpie.

He’s just one of many birds that have fluttered through my yard, perching on chairs, or the lips of potted plants. This is their home: Crows, Blue Jays, Ibis, Brown Thrashers. The occasional Wren or Bluebird. Owls that were uprooted during a summer storm, a baby pair sleeping along the exposed branch of a tree. They’d blink angrily whenever we’d dare approach the yard during daylight hours. Not just birds, though. Possums. Long black snakes. Scores of lizards and geckos. Feral cats that my own cat lovingly admires from his perch behind the sliding glass door. A family of raccoons whose babies washed their hands in that same birdbath where my cardinal likes to splash. I want to remember every detail, jot it down for posterity, because after three years spent cultivating this yard with care, I’m about to leave it to whoever comes next.

On arrival, it wasn’t much. Large oak trees shade either corner, which is pleasant and helps cool the long summer days, but the rest was all bare cement slab and patchy weeds. I spent time at Lowes, community plant sales at nearby Leu Gardens. Planted anywhere that wasn’t green. Lined up a slew of pots along the lip of the slab, made an outdoor living space. Things grew and things died. I watered too much or not enough. Some plants needed me more than others. I climbed on ladders alone (ill-advised, without my wife’s knowledge) and strung up strands of Edison bulbs, casting fairy glow over the leaves at night. We were gifted a griddle, made burgers and breakfast sandwiches. We bought a firepit. On nights when it got below seventy degrees (which wasn’t often), I fed sticks to the blaze and stared upward through the branches, counting the stars. I scavenged for patio furniture, collecting chairs from castoffs tossed in neighbors’ trash. Hooted with delight when I discovered a glass-topped outdoor wicker coffee table; dragged it down the street like I’d won the goddamn lottery. My wife was patient with me through all this. Knew I wanted to make something good.

Now, as if anticipating my departure, the Rosemary plant we’ve had for over two years has wilted and died. No more syrups for cocktails or sprigs for our Thanksgiving turkey. It’s the last yard where my constant companion of fourteen years got to romp and play — a small French bulldog named Lola Jane, black and white spotted pig-cow of a creature — and now when I leave, I must contend with the terrible fact that she won’t be coming with me. New yard, but not for her. It’s too hard to think about that, so I focus on where the new potted plants will live. Some need more sun than others. I’ll have to be careful where I set them (but regardless of my want, my dog loved to sunbathe, too, though we both knew it was bad for her).

It’s a rental. Even as I cultivated herbs and flowers, clipped back weeds, coaxed life into the stunted palms, I understood they were not mine to keep. The crows I befriended with fresh water and offering of pistachios will miss me, I hope. They left me gifts: shiny coins, foil stickers, a magnet in the shape of a gleaming rifle. It won’t matter if I’m not there to change out the bathwater. The crows are smart. They’ll find food and friendship elsewhere.

There will be new birds; I live in Florida for crying out loud. But there will never be another strange-headed cardinal. There will never be another fourteen-year-old pig-cow-dog, trundling around the grass, searching out dead things to roll in. There will never be this yard again, I think, and that’s where the heartbreak lies. I’ll make all new memories. But leaving these ghosts behind certainly stings.

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