Once, in a year of postpartum depression, when fear of death was something that plagued me, I went for a long run in the evening. I was trying to burn off sorrow. I remember the sky was a luminous shade of apricot lined with lilac, and my spirits began to lift and a random, rattling thought about death coincided with the sudden appearance of a small, bright yellow bird on a fence post. The bird was wild, but looked exquisite and out-of-place in the neighbourhood otherwise full of bland, old, postage-stamp-sized houses with crooked front porches. I wondered how it had come to be there. Mostly, birds around the area were grey, or pale brown, but this bird was the yellow of a wax crayon. I kept running. The yellow bird chirped and hopped on ahead of me for several blocks and with a jolt, I felt that it was some kind of magic portal: When it came, death would be a tiny yellow bird leading me to a new place, nothing to be afraid of. I knew it in that way you can know something that can never really be known.