Take Flight

It should come as no surprise that this is how you chose to return. After all, you were always most alive as the surrounding world slumbered. The moon was your spotlight as it is now, casting a halo about your head. I could hear you then, singing when you thought not a soul would hear. I can hear you now, and I follow the sound as I climb out of the window to dance in the moonlight you once claimed as your own. I’ve been fooled to think I can follow your footsteps, but not a print is left from the life you once lived so loudly.

All I have now is the trail of your soft brown feathers leading me to places I was never bold enough to traverse. I go now in your absence, following the sound of your call. I know it is you from the song alone, and that is what takes me on this fool’s errand, following the glimpses I see so far ahead.

Even as I leave home behind, cutting my feet upon brambles and roots, I get no closer to you. Perhaps this is a journey that will never end, but even this is better than the life you left behind. Without you, the house is empty. Bodies upright go from room to room. Conversations are had. I remember nothing of them. I only comprehend your absence, all else is white noise.

They did not know you as the bird of the night I have always known. They saw you in the day when you were lost and silent. They never bothered to see you at your height, arms up and fingers splayed like the feathers that adorn you in this new life. What is a family if they allow someone so endless to fade away?

This is why I leave them behind. I follow the far-away visions of you. The heart of white plumes calls me forward as you sing, onyx eyes seeking the pieces of myself I nearly allowed to shatter and disappear. You will not let me forget the only real joy I ever felt.

I felt it on that night so long ago, the one night I dared to dance at your side. I was no longer an observer, a dreamer in the night. I was yours and you were mine. We were free, just for one night. Together.

Now, you are feathers, songs, and freedom. Your one night extends into eternity as I crawl behind. Bruises bloom across my skin where your fingertips once laid. Blood forms and crusts beneath the crescents of mine. Beneath the moon, you call to me and I move. I force my soul to do what bones and flesh should not.

Fatigue caresses my weary form as you finally come into clear view. Wetness pools in my vision as tears streak through the mud crusted upon my flushed cheeks. Numbness calls as you beat your wings, having left your branch to perch instead upon me. I feel a smile tug at the corners of my lips as your song blends with that I pull from my memory. I do not realize my eyes are closed until they open once more.

I look down from what was once my shoulder, seeing a face pale as the light pouring through the trees. Bruises and blood are dark as pitch, warmth quickly fading where a soul once resided. I lift my gaze, looking to yours to find an identical reflection. Your song is whole, mine just beginning as we take flight.

We leave the pain of that life behind, two barn owls free in the night.