One minute, I was flying free through the air.

The next, I came crashing down into cold, unforgiving concrete.

As I lay dying, I tried to move my now useless appendages, but all that came out was a pathetic twitching. Panic and pain was my world. In the distance, the mountains I watched began to turn, turn in the snow.

I could feel my heart race as this thing, this titan turned around and stared down at me through its immensely black hood. I could feel its gaze meet mine somehow, through that emptiness, as it leaned in towards me.

Suddenly, the prospect of dying didn't seem so bad.

A familiar sense of longing and comfortability began to wash over me as my mind faded to nothing...

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As I watched the bird die, its little wings flapping, I felt tears stream down my face.

"Oh no, oh just sleep little one, I'm so sorry, so sorry..."

What was I apologizing for? I didn't do this.

And it occurred to me how much I must have looked like death to this little creature, with my large hood blackening my face and my large, slender-fingered hand coming towards it, ready to embrace it and pull it towards its ultimate end, and I thought about how it may have seen the countless stars reflected in that great endless pool, somewhat like eyes...

you are the hand
hauling back
my cries. my mother’s
mother hardened
from dust.
you are almost
my eyes.

you are not sky
or frozen air.
i suspect  
you have no skin.

love is my left
wing smacked
on your pane
that i mistook
for an open door.

i let the nights
do their undoing
of my feathers into light.
maybe this way
you would welcome me.

I want to die free
and not live caged;
a bird
a bird
a bird is free

Why can't I
be a bird?

my attention is deficit
like a bird with no worms
to find

he teleports
to his next location
a jolt of electricity
popping
from one streetlamp
to the other

never soaring
he has no wings to flap

A rock fell on a bird
knocking it down
rather than helping
I left it on the ground

For if I moved the rock
and the bird was unscathed
it would surely fly off
leaving me for better days

and all that I would have
would be the memory
of the happiness I once had
the love that used to be

So instead I leave the rock
That traps the bird here
held in place by the weight
while I'm held by fear