Fearful Freedom!

 

A bird flew far from a tree to my window

a withered tree, a lifeless tree

It struggled to fly with one of its wings clipped

How? How?

How did it manage to fly?

It kept pecking at my window

Every morning I would wake up to the noise

I looked at it from my bed

struggling to get up

I would look at it as it stopped pecking

We locked eyes, quite a few times

each time I would look away with an urgency

Fear, there was an inexplicable fear

there were unspoken stories

radiating through the window

I dared not open the window

Scared, if I open it,

the bird,

it’ll vanish

or ask me to unclip its wing

it might ask me to pet it

to trust it

to let it in

it might even ask me to get up from the bed, when it’s hard to do so

only to not be there the next day to do the same

What if it asks me to look it in the eyes and not look away?

and just when I get used to it,

it asks me to let it go…

I got tired,

tired of the questions

I opened the window, looked it in the eyes

unclipped its wing, took it in my hands

Silence, deafening Silence

complete surrender on both parts

I asked it to fly away

it wouldn’t

it circled back in my hands

then sat again near the window, unbothered

An open blue sky

a bird free to fly

but rests near my window instead

when I touched its unclipped wing

it turned back

looked me straight in the eye

then flew away, still struggling

as if it forgot how to fly without one of its wings clipped

Up it went in the sky, slowly, fearfully

I woke up again the next morning

at the pecking noise

a bird with one of its wings clipped

a different bird this time

each time

every morning

it’s like a ritual now,

letting these birds fly

Until one day they all come back,

rest near my window and ask

What will you do with us now?

What do we do with this freedom?

How do we make sense of a world without struggle?

How do we fly fearlessly without anything holding us back?