One Day the Birds Will Sing

The world went quiet. Too quiet. Once, a song danced in the wind, but those times are lost. There is no music now. Fingers still over dusted lyres and the troubadours are voiceless. In this age of darkness, what is left to sing about?

No one knows when the storm swept in, but in it came like a callous brush and painted black the sky. We did not fear at first, because we were safe inside our homes. We had our mechanical locks and our news outlets as security blankets. This was happening to someone else, somewhere else. It would be over, and the world would return as it once was.

But the sun never returned. The sky remained a vast black canvas that no stars would deign to touch. As the crops withered beneath the sunless sky, and the animals died with nothing to sustain them, our elite technological civilization forgot how to be civil.

It started as a riot, and became an insurrection. And soon the world was a chaotic pit that no politician could ever control. Suburban neighborhoods became dangerous ganglands, and lone wolves became easy prey.

Death became a common part of life.

When everything began, I once heard the weeping of the mothers as their children withered beneath the storm, starved and sickly, clinging to soft promises and lullaby lies.

The mothers weep no more.

Their childrens’ bones are now dust in the wind, and the awful drought dried their mournful tears. The thirst captured the wailing in their throats, coarse as desert sand. No one dares to speak, it hurts to speak. And words are not enough.

When the storms began, the rain seemed to fall forever. Too much, we thought. The world will be an ocean and we will all be drowned. How I long now for those days. The waters dried. A cruel twist of fate, from a sunless sky.

The faithful believe this to be some sign of God, that the sinners on Earth had finally met their penance. I’m not sure I could believe in a God that would relish in starving his children. No, I put my faith into tangible things.

I clutch in my hand a discovered relic, a heart-shaped locket, once silver, now rust. Within the locket is a fading picture of mother and child, bright smiles against a sun-kissed sky. I don't know who they are. But I have faith in what finding it means.

In truth, I found the locket in a shallow grave. Not on one of the dead, but amongst them. I don't know what compelled me to take it, but in that moment it seemed such a cruel resting place for such a beautiful, delicate thing. I rescued the locket from its grave, and it rescued me from a faithless future.

I spent a lot of time examining the pair within the locket. I envied at their easy going smiles. I pined for the green grass they stood on. I thought about how much they must have taken that perfect day for granted. They probably thought there'd be an infinite amount of days just like that one.

Perhaps one day, the sun will kiss the sky once more, and the grass will grow, the children will laugh and the birds will sing their songs.

I dream of that world. And I hope someday to see it. And if I don’t, and my children don’t, then I hope for that world all the same.

And I hope that future child walks through fields of golden flowers, without a single thought of darkness, drought and death. Let him hear the laughter of his mother’s lightness. Let him bask in the glow of an evening sun and hum the lovely melodies of the summer birds.

It’s faint, but I can almost hear their song, in all my dreaming.