Birdsong in a Fading Sky

They say golden years,

but gold rusts, doesn’t it?

Or maybe it just melts,

slipping through fingers like wasted time,

like the minutes I spent staring at a lamp’s dull flicker,

listening to the hum of a world that no longer cares.

The birds outside don’t stop singing,

but their songs are cracked, off-key,

warped by the wind that drags autumn leaves

to their brittle deaths.

They don’t get tired, I suppose.

Not like we do.

Not like you.

You sit in a chair that groans under the weight of waiting,

watching dust dance in the dim glow,

your hands folded like forgotten paper cranes.

And I wonder if you were ever young,

if your voice was ever more than a whisper,

if your bones ever burned with the need to move,

to run, to feel something other than the slow collapse.

The sky outside splits open,

two moons hanging low,

suspended like unanswered questions.

I want to ask, but I won’t.

I know how it feels

to be tired of answering.

The golden light of your so-called freedom

curls at the edges like an old photograph,

and I watch you fade,

watch the years stretch like a yawn,

watch you count the birds

as if they might carry you somewhere else.

Somewhere where gold stays gold,

where songs don’t rot in the throat,

where the whispers don’t sound like goodbyes.

But the lamp still flickers,

the sky still sighs,

and the birds,

they just keep singing.