The Heartfast Hornbill
A Cinquain Chain for International Widows Day
This International Widow's Day, we celebrate faithfulness in marriage.
Of both widows and widowers.
For staying the eternal course.
Some branches grow empty. Love does not.
🦜🌧️🍃🦜🌧️🍃🦜🌧️🍃🦜🌧️🍃
Hornbill
Returns at dusk
To his nesting willow.
A sturdy branch, once occupied.
Empty.
🦜🌧️🍃🦜🌧️🍃🦜🌧️🍃🦜🌧️🍃
He rests
On the bare branch.
The wind teases the leaves.
Their laughter heard through the forest.
Like hers.
🦜🌧️🍃🦜🌧️🍃🦜🌧️🍃🦜🌧️🍃
The rain
It comes and goes.
Flowers beneath the tree.
Young chick chirping their endless song.
He tears.
And stays.
🦜🌧️🍃🦜🌧️🍃🦜🌧️🍃🦜🌧️🍃
He knows
His heartfast heart.
The bare branch ever bare.
But its broad bent remains sturdy
For her.
🦜🌧️🍃🦜🌧️🍃🦜🌧️🍃🦜🌧️🍃
Original story by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.
For Mikeydred's June challenge
Mirrors of the Mind by Michelle Liew is a collection of psychological and supernatural short stories that explore the quiet unease beneath ordinary moments. These are not tales of spectacle, but of subtle fracture — where memory distorts, silence speaks, and the self is not always singular. In these stories, what is unseen often carries the greatest weight, and what lingers is not what is shown, but what is felt.
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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