Captivity

I am not obsessed with birds

It is worse than that

I watch them because somewhere
inside their suspended bodies
I keep seeing myself

And perhaps
that is why I keep watching them

Not to study them

To capture them in stillness long enough
to understand
what in me
continues surviving this way

Because what devastates me most
is how beautiful their endangerment is

How every living thing
appears most holy
at the exact moment
it could disappear

There are birds
who damage themselves quietly

Not from storms

From devotion

In captivity some begin feather-plucking

Small repeated griefs
where the body
unable to escape its own longing
turns inward against itself

The beak returns
again and again
to the same tender place

Chest
Wing
Breastbone

Until the aviary floor
becomes covered
in the evidence of attachment

I understand that now

How the soul
when unable to fly freely
toward what it loves
sometimes begins consuming itself instead

And still
the bird continues singing

That is the part
that ruins me

Not the wound

The devotion surviving beneath it

The instinct to keep returning
to the very place
where the heart exhausts itself

Because birds are creatures of imprinting

Once attachment enters the nervous system
the body remembers

Migration paths
Familiar calls at dusk
The exact direction
of returning

And what is longing
if not the body
trying to migrate back
to the place
it believes warmth once lived?

Meanwhile
my dignity survives quietly
inside the attachment

like a woman standing perfectly still
inside rising water
hoping no one notices
how hard she is fighting
to keep breathing

Still graceful
Still composed
Still answering softly
while entire oceans
move beneath the skin

Some evenings
I watch the birds crossing
the darkening sky
and feel something inside me
recognize itself in them completely

Not freedom

But suspension

The beauty of remaining airborne while exhaustion slowly enters the wings

And perhaps
that is what devotion truly is

Not love at its beginning

But love after it realizes
the light may never stay
and continues flying toward it anyway