[Narrator:]
A bird once flew with joy, chasing the horizon.
But the sky grew heavy, and his wings grew tired.
One evening, he fell by the quiet sea.
A young girl found him, her hands full of dreams.
She knelt by his side and asked:
[The Girl:]
I found you trembling near the dreaming tide,
Your feathers torn as though the heavens cried.
Tell me, worn traveler, where have you flown?
What hunger drove you past the worlds you’ve known?
[The Bird:]
I chased the rim where fire and heavens kiss,
A line of gold no hand can ever miss.
I sang to suns, I danced where eagles dared,
I broke my heart on dreams that never cared.
I rose, I fell, I rose again and bled,
Until the winds unwove the life I led.
The sky, sweet child, is vast, but it forgets;
It makes no grave for those it once begets.
The sky is not a temple, but a field of knives.
The stars you seek will teach you how hope dies.
To fly is to wager all you are and own,
And to be forgotten even by the stone.
Freedom is a flame that eats its own,
A summit where the winds strip flesh from bone.
Dreams build their monuments from broken wings;
Songs leave behind the silence that they bring.
[The Girl:]
I hear the hollow echo in your song,
The mourning stitched between the bright and wrong.
Your wings are altars where the old prayers bled;
Your eyes, a ledger of the tears you’ve shed.
Yet if this is the price that freedom claims,
If every flight must carve itself in flames,
Then I will pay with all I have and more.
Better to burn than to be chained ashore.
[The Bird:]
Bold soul, you walk the edge where light falls blind;
You court the storm that cracks the clearest mind.
I too once roared against the tethered clay,
Believing wings could tear the night away.
But listen:
Not every fall redeems the climb.
Not every song survives the mouth of time.
To dream is to accept both birth and grave,
To build, to lose, to give what none can save.
[The Girl:]
Still would I leap, though cliffs erase my name;
Still would I sing, though silence be my claim.
Let it be said: she lived, and she was free
And when the end came, she did not flee.
If dreams devour, let them feast on me whole;
If stars betray, still shall I bless my soul.
Better to vanish in a sky of flame,
Than bear a life untouched by any name.
[The Bird:]
Then fly, fierce child, into the ruthless blue;
Let winds unmake you, they will make you true.
The sky is cruel but it remembers one:
The heart that dares to burn brighter than the sun.
This poem is a metaphorical tale about a young woman challenging the weight of social traditions and limitations, choosing the perilous beauty of freedom over the safety of conformity.
