Broken Birds
01/15/23
01/15/23
Dear Unnamed,
I see dark purple, painted nails picking at cuticles, peeling bits of skin away as if they are no more than little annoyances, rather than her perfection, and I wonder what she has to be anxious about. Her skin tears away from the fingers and she doesn’t even seem to notice she is bleeding, or that she is picking away parts of her that have never done any harm to her, nor anyone else. What does she have to be destraught over when she has her whole life ahead of her? She acts as if there’s no more time and she looks like her soul has crumpled to ash behind those eyes. Her eyes make me feel like I’m lost at sea, and it’s a welcome feeling. I love this broken bird in front of me, even if she hasn’t learnt to fly, just quite yet. I know she’ll get there one day, and I cannot wait for it, but I also dread the day she spreads her wings and learns she does not need me and flies away forever and a day. How do you say “I love you,” without it being a jail cell? Because, Unnamed, I love her, I truly do, but she’s still a flighty flightless bird, and she refuses to be caged by such sentiments, nor does she even believe their truth to begin with.
Her eyes dart around everywhere else but my own. I only want to see her smile, but she won’t. I think she is afraid to because, if she does, she leaves herself vulnerable to fall off the cliff of joy once more and break her fragile self on the rocky shore that does not know how to be forgiving or gentle. I think she knows this, and this is why she will not permit herself to love me back. She is afraid to break more than she already has, and I do not know how to tell her to trust the process and let herself freefall, how to tell her to trust me, how to tell her I will always catch her, and make her believe it. How do you save someone who is always just out of reach of your fingertips?
I tell her she is not alone, but she won’t listen to me; she only interrupts, and I think it is because she is so used to being alone and having no one to talk to, she is unaccustomed to having someone else to listen to that she forgets how to pause and breathe. I don’t think she always remembers how to breathe, honestly. She’s a flighty flightless bird and is always on the run from the world. I think she’s afraid to even appreciate the sky because she is worried she will fall into it and drown in its forever.
Love,
Yours
About the Creator
Emery Pine
I’m a poet with sprinklings of fiction. I write with the soul, so I hope you find it interesting and relatable
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More stories from Emery Pine and writers in Poets and other communities.
Letter 01/29/22
01/29/22 Dear Unnamed, She smelt like cigarettes and perfume. It made me wonder when she would die. Is this too morbid? Too dark? I can’t help but wonder. Doesn’t she know she’s loved? That her son needs her to find him worth living for because he doesn’t think he is and he needs a sign to keep going? Doesn’t she know that if she goes, he will, too? That her mother will have two graves to cry over through the years? Does she not care or does she just not know? How nice it must be to not know. How nice it must be to not have that kind of pressure weighing you down. To feel like you have to live for someone else. But, who else would you live for? If you say “for yourself,” you’re a liar. None of us find ourselves worth living for. It’s why we put our worth into everyone and everything but us. It’s why her son needs her to say he’s worth it. It’s why she needs to live for him— because she won’t do it for herself. It’s like she doesn’t have the capacity to. She’s too far gone under the waves of sadness and cigarette smoke, too far drowned in the vodka and coke that she tries hiding from him. But he knows. He knows how lost she is. It’s part of why he needs to know he’s enough. He needs her to be ok, because if she’s not, then what justice is there in this world? What is there thatw’s right and safe, then? Because he doesn’t know and needs an answer.
By Emery Pine2 years ago in Poets
Harboring Happiness - Day 1
Today in harboring happiness, I idle on the front porch while a finch flitters through the resident pile of leaves littering my yard. The hounds huff at her rustling between cracks in the sagging, sunbaked fence. I wonder if she is nesting or scavenging for rootless seeds. Yet, happiness imagines she is playing hopscotch instead, as if even birds understand these silly little things need time and a place to exist.
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Comments (6)
This was very deep and filled with emotions! Very beautiful written! Love your style!
This style is unique to me, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Well done
Beautifully heartfelt and I am in that position with some wonderful friends who cannot accept my support, so I will just wait for them to heal.
This is beautiful, yet so full of sorrow. Well done.
This is so beautiful.
she only needs to take that step, or first flight, nice story