The Day the Birds Started Singing

The Day the Birds Started Singing

1__________________

She could hear the birds. No matter what she did, she could hear them, singing where they had never sung before. Even though all windows were up, the doors were locked, they weren't invited, they were singing. This is when she knew.

She knew that things were changing. She had waited for so long. The loud, the weeping, the voices. All the lefts that were rights and rights that were lefts. The soft gesture that made her body electrified with fear. The fear that felt like home. She had nestled into these walls for so long. She watered the plants for so long that grew up these walls. Choking beautiful vines that she had cared for and grown. They grew so long, so wide, so high, they had covered even the sun. She had figured a few ways out of it so that she could see the light.

Looking up from her precious places that she had filled with all the things that would help keep her going. She had just wanted to keep going. She wasn't just in four walls. Oh no, there were hundreds, maybe thousands of walls by now that had made themselves into mazes. Sometimes she felt like they were going against her. Even though she had built them, they seemed to take on their own will. They would trap her, confuse her, lead her. She would try to find her way back to favorite spot, with her favorite blanket and mug and herbs. Some of her favorite books too. Sometimes she couldn't find her way back to rest. Sometimes it would take days and weeks, and one time even a year. When she would find it, oh she would lie in it and drink of her last cup of tea, that had sometimes gone old, but she would dump it out and make a new one. The herbs could last forever, right? So she would steep some lemon myrtle with nettles and be just fine again.

Even with her warm tonic in hand, wrapped in linen scarves and beanies, she would hear those words. So many words. Oh, how she loved words. She would dance with them, fight with them, push them away and also let them become part of her. They would always end up becoming part of her.

She stretched towards the sky, whole body, arms reaching as high as she could, only to crumble forward in defeat. When she'd lay there in her pile, she knew that it wasn't over. Sometimes it was just that one tiny ray of light that would make it's way through all the vines and poisonous flowers and would shine right in front of her. She would open eyes and just stare at it. Touch it. Feel it's warmth compared to the parts that didn't have the light on it, and know that hope was calling again. Freedom was whispering and reminding her that it truly wasn't over yet. Although the birds hadn't been singing or coming anymore.

Until that day. That one day they started singing. She couldn't hear anything else but the singing of the birds. So many songs, coming from every direction, even though there was no way for their sound to come in anymore. As she heard their singing, she knew they were singing for her. To her. The songs helped her know that she could hear. She hadn't known she could hear. Or that she couldn't. She hadn't known she had mighty shields over the sides of her head, above and below, or that there were coverings over her mouth. Her eyes were allowed to see this whole time, but everything looked upside down. That's when she realized it was all upside down.

When the chirping songs came into her ears, her ears that no longer had the shields next to them. She had the shields in her hands held low. She felt a breeze across her face, and whether the windows were up or down she could hear them. Were they singing from inside her? Where were they? Why, when they sung, did she know that she had armor over her entire body and senses that she hadn't known about? The birds were singing of perfect love. They were singing of the most perfect love. The most brilliant purity. They sang of how all the rights were right and all the wrongs were wrong. How the good was good and the bad was bad. How there was a north, south, east and west, and that there was up and there was down. That she knew these things, and they were built into her all these years. She had been resting and fighting and surviving in her walls and vines and things. Clarity had been washing in her veins. Justice had been sewing her a new skin that was radiant and clear.

These birds were singing these things, and she could hear them now. These birds were hers, they lived inside her and wouldn't stop singing. She knew they would only sing if they knew they were safe. And although the confusion still swirled in a black and white cloud around her like a raging storm, they kept singing. They knew something deeper and wider and stronger than this looming cloud above her.

2___________

There was love. It was a world of it’s own. It became so unruly, this love. She had spoken I love you. I do. I will die for you. I will trust you. I will forgive you. I will forgive you. And yes, yes, yes, I will forgive you. The forgiveness flooded out of her, with mercy abounding, with grace astounding, the waterfall of this love had no end.

Until the ‘I do’ ended. It was cut off beyond her own strength. She reached as long and fierce as she could and it left her fingertips, as swift as a swinging knife.

This heap of love lay on the floor. She looked at it. She couldn’t take her eyes off of it. Her eyes welled with so many tears she couldn’t see it anymore. The well in her eyes was as deep as the ocean, would there be an end? Would she be able to make sense of any of it if she couldn’t see it. The water molecules became a distorted magnified glass in the fronts of her eyes.

With nothing to stop it or dry it up, it has remained.

She had hoped things would have happened. She had hoped they would have changed. She tried to see the way out all the time. She looked for sea breezes to carry her away to clear skies. She was always looking for that spark that would light all her flames to burn up all the hurt spaces. She needed that warmth from within. She needed to feel the safety of the light and its warming strength. These drafts shiver her. The shivers that last for hours and days Keeping her eyes so wide open that everything comes in.

Every.

Thing.

The things that keep her shivering keep coming in and they never straighten out. Her eyes fight with each other, so often, she wants to shut them. They do not know which way to turn, for every way they look the darkness grows deeper.

In that deep darkness, she sees a spark. It keeps her coming back for more.

3______________

Holding the little bird in her hands, forehead to forehead. The bird sings the softest melody into her frontal lobe, almost a whisper. Hushing flames, turning them into streams. She felt a deep place inside her head sparkling like minerals atop hot springs floating into the crisp air above. She touched her head and felt a thin round piece of glass. She grabbed the glass and looked at it, seeing her deformed face. The songs of the bird called her to hold it upward into the sun and without even thinking she held it outstretched above her into the blinding light. When she lifted her head to look into the glass again she saw a face she did not recognize at first. Sparkling eyes as clear and deep as the ocean. Skin as radiant as the sun itself. Wild hair, fierce and winding far down, tied in every direction with perfect twists and turns, every strand a different color of the sunset. Her mouth was like reeds with which to blow the purest of sound. Sounds that would frequent the high seas like sails carried upon waters to lands unknown.

She dropped the glass to her side, trying to catch her breath. The little bird sang a song of revelation and revivation into her lungs. The deflation she so often felt was being held and opened with the sweetest, transforming, filling songs.

As she knelt down over herself in the dewed morning grass, she wondered whose face this could be. Indeed it could not be her own, for hers was disfigured, disproportioned, shallow, broken with blood shattering pain and eyes that were always blurred with tears. But, those eyes. They reminded her of someone she knew. They reminded her of someone she’d maybe talked with or wanted to love. She wanted to look again, but the gaze looking back at her haunted her with too much wonder and intimidation. The smile that looked back at her; unmoved ...even by such a being as herself. She put the piece of glass in her bag that she always had with her. It fit perfectly into one of the pockets on the outside, nestled beside some dry sage and hops she had picked years before. The sage was there to remind her of her lover, who she had long lost and was in persistent search for. The hops were to calm her mind, with just one deep breath of them, or to drop in warm water, infusing tranquility She loved them so. She would never forget what she saw, the image of this face was burned into her mind...like it had become part of her.

...and so the journey continues...