A Bird Set Free

‘Clipped wings, I was a broken thing.

Had a voice, had a voice, but, I could not sing,

You would wind me down,

I struggled on the ground,

So lost, the line had been crossed.

Had a voice, had a voice, but, I could not talk,

You held me down,

I struggle to fly, now.’

-Sia (A Bird Set Free)

She laughed at your words.

She smiled.

Because she could.

Her heart worn on a sleeve of black and white,

Pumped red.

Bright like the setting sun on a crimson back drop.

And yet, dark, like the streams of blood that flowed through her veins.

Veins of gold.

Much like Midas’s spell, 

She was doomed from the start.

To laugh and yet not feel the warmth that should’ve engulfed her very being.

To cry tears that didn’t truly exist, and yet, bleed out into that icy winter storm like the howls of a wolf in pain.

A whimper-were her words.

A whimper that echoed throughout the land and receded back into the hole that held her captive, just as quickly as it had come.

But still, she smiled.

Still, she laughed.

Still, she made everyone around her feel loved.

For, her heart had never been black,

A combination of midnight strands that tugged on the chord of her life.

No.

Her heart pumped red.

A scarlet that bled from her eyes, her ears and her lips as she pulled that thin mouth of hers into an ecstatic smile.

One that would remain a façade that reflected her life so precisely.

A lie.

That’s what it was.

A lie that beat her black and blue with livid stripes caressing both her arms.

Her lungs were bruised,

But, so was everything else.

And yet, no one knew that, did they?

They didn’t know how much she smiled and laughed just for them.

How much she carried a heavy heart, broken at the seams and bleeding on the floor,

As they laughed along with her laugh,

And smiled along with her smile.

While, in reality, she cradled her heart on the tile floor, sat on her knees,

Hunched over.

Pleading for the world to stop pulling at the string of her life,

That would snap,

At any given point of time.

The wolf howled into the dead of night,

And a soft whimper could be heard throughout the Heavens,

And this time,

It seized to exist before anyone could question its existence.