The Muted Bird
Poetry for the I Didn't Say That Out Loud Challenge
Let your voice be heard. Michelle Liew
🐦🐤🕊️🐥🦜🐧🦢🦩🦉🐦⬛🪶🐦🐤🕊️🐥🦜🐧🦢🦩🦉🐦⬛🪶🐦🐤🕊️🐥🦜
A voiceless bird, ring round its throat
Its wings curled up. quiet. clipped
Not broken, only bound.
Its silence, safer than sound.
🐦🐤🕊️🐥🦜🐧🦢🦩🦉🐦⬛🪶🐦🐤🕊️🐥🦜🐧🦢🦩🦉🐦⬛🪶🐦🐤🕊️🐥🦜
It perches atop unvoiced words
Syllables unsaid
The griefs I told like unpainted images
The scream I curtailed before it burnt.
🐦🐤🕊️🐥🦜🐧🦢🦩🦉🐦⬛🪶🐦🐤🕊️🐥🦜🐧🦢🦩🦉🐦⬛🪶🐦🐤🕊️🐥🦜
Some evenings, it flaps its wings--
A pulse, a gentle nudge on its cage--
And I listen--
To its quivering note, chirped. before it chokes.
🐦🐤🕊️🐥🦜🐧🦢🦩🦉🐦⬛🪶🐦🐤🕊️🐥🦜🐧🦢🦩🦉🐦⬛🪶🐦🐤🕊️🐥🦜
But just before its quiet rise,
Off its branch, its wings unfurled
A single chirp, small, surprised
In the dark forest. will be heard.
🐦🐤🕊️🐥🦜🐧🦢🦩🦉🐦⬛🪶🐦🐤🕊️🐥🦜🐧🦢🦩🦉🐦⬛🪶🐦🐤🕊️🐥
🐦🐤🕊️🐥🦜🐧🦢🦩🦉🐦⬛🪶🐦🐤🕊️🐥🦜🐧🦢🦩🦉🐦⬛🪶🐦🐤🕊️🐥
Original poem by Michelle Liew - AI tags are coincidental.
About the Creator
Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin
Hi, i am an English Language teacher cum freelance writer with a taste for pets, prose and poetry. When I'm not writing my heart out, I'm playing with my three dogs, Zorra, Cloudy and Snowball.
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Comments (5)
Wonderful, Michelle <3
Oof, this hit in the soft spots! I think that bird knows more than it lets on… might even drop a full mixtape when no one's watching.✨
This is beautiful, Michelle. Well done.
Well-wrought, fellow bird-lover! I had to linger on the fellow in the picture as much as I did on your words, as I found his pattern equally mesmerizing! Our omissions sometimes tell important and meaningful truths our words cannot relate.
Beautiful Michelle. I want to try this challenge. How freeing to let our thoughts go … to be public.