Penja

I was feeling a little broken this morning, my heart empty and hurting. i had a lot of questions running through my mind and my thoughts wouldn’t stop racing.

so i got dressed in my sad girl disguise and took a long walk. i just walk and walk until i get tired, like a dark storm trudging through the city in the soft morning light. trying to disappear, i guess. eventually, i find a tree to smoke under, one where the sun cascades over me just right. inhale, i shut my eyes and turn my face towards the sun. exhale. for a few moments, i can just exist.

it’s not unusual for me to see something horrible or inhumane while i walk in this unruly place, but i saw this little blue bird fallen on the ground. she was pretty with her eyes shut, almost too clean to be on the dirty ground. i don’t know if she was dead. I was so shocked, because you don’t see many birds like her around. i’d usually look away from a dead animal, but i paused to look at her closely. i walked off but, i kept thinking about her and had this song playing in the back of my mind,

“little bird, bluebird, fly away, for both of us”

And I just was so emotional because… you know, when you just know that something is meant for you, or isn’t, sometimes I feel like nature has its own way of communicating with you, especially in extremely severe situations. not in a sacrificial way, but in a way just for you to know…

And i realize now that in the moment, i didn’t really care about, you know, what kind of health the bird was in! I just wanted to go back and hold her. I pieced all of this together and retraced my steps to the side streets beside the university. my mind was blurry and my eyes were filled with tears when i first walked past her. so i couldn’t quite remember which side of the street she was on, so i checked all of them.

in less than an hour, she was gone. did someone help her? did she gain consciousness and fly away later? i had even more questions than i had before. all unanswered, and only more confusion.

I think there have been times before where a bird has been a little bit of a message for me.

And I think this was it. that, even though it doesn’t make sense, I should let her go. she’s gone now, and she probably never needed me to begin with. and that we’ll both be okay in the end, one day, maybe holding only the lingering ache of something once broken.