Starlight

A small brown bird is stuck in the chimney. It’s a beautiful spring night. The kind that makes the heart wake from its hibernation, and the blood flow just a hint faster. The little wings flutter continually, but ever slower as the night gets deeper.

Does it remember the wind beneath its wings? The summers evening breeze that kissed every feather and left it sitting dreamily on the fence as the sun sank in purple clouds. The colours of the world in the early morning. Dew on grass. The time when the rains beat down with such force it lost sight of the world and was lost in nothingness for a while. That nothingness would have been preferable to this…this blackness that penetrates every pore, and flows through the little veins, until it fills the little heart and cracks it. The nothingness had energy, vigor and life in it. Blackness is just black.

What is it thinking? Do birds know love? Do they feel the bitterness of having to leave without saying goodbye? What did it find in the sky, above the clouds? Did it see the gods? What does it see now, amidst all the blackness? The fluttering in the chimney grows ever fainter. Can it see the stars? Who does it cry out to, when the last breath of air leaves its miserable blackened lungs?