I expected to wait my whole life away.
Never thought that bird would return home.
What if.
What if she didn't have meaning
tied in a note around her leg?
What if I was happy
to have some anguish to relish in?

Do I tend?
Pick something up off
the floor of my memory?
Do I find something new,
yet long gone,
to ascribe my longing for?
To apply my doubt to?
What if anguish has always been here,
untapped and brimming,
and I just keep picking things
to soak in it.

I fear it was never the bird having flown,
that brought me to such depths.
I fear I've been living in these depths all along,
and just finding reasons to persist there.