Hey,
cute little bird,
where did you go?
Can you forgive me
for not being your keeper?
Where, in this tangled life,
does your muslin gown of flight hang,
the one you never had the chance
to wear?
On the edge
between staying and leaving,
being and not being,
memory and death,
you and I
are just a heart,
beating,
bloody,
soft.
Just a silence
stitched with the echoes
of your gentle chirps.
Just a lanky clown
made full
by your tiny grandeur.
From your silence,
a whole garden grows.
Hey,
cute little bird,
from your smallness
I learned to be an ocean.
Greatness is not measured.
Love lives in the immeasurable.
In innocence,
even a cruel world turns back
toward itself.
In justice,
our wound,
the wound of being without you,
heals.
But this wound
grows deeper each day.
The memories are gone now.
You died—
and I’m not even
a memory anymore.
Is there any hope
you’ll remember my love
someday?
Will these innocent,
tiny quails
remember us?
The earth
and time
keep spinning,
trying to find the world
that emptied itself
in your absence.
