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| Art by Chris Conn |
"The thoughts of a prisoner- they're not free either. They kept returning to the same things." - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
We all sing the same songs for the different days in our lives. We have songs for the joys of life, we have songs for when we weep, we have songs for when the sun is about to rise, we have songs for the time the sun ceases to shine. We play the different songs in our hearts with the mind telling us that what we do only hurt us in the vaguest but most memorable way.
We are our own songbirds. We chirp to the sounds of our hearts and sometimes heed not the exchange of chemicals across synapses to dying neurons in our brains. We grow accustomed to the battles waged everyday that we get by with small victories. We perch atop our favorite trees and sing our tunes day in and out. We watch the flicker of the sun vanish, its embers sputtering and surrendering to the night. We sing in the dark our musings that we nurture in the day, recalling many a past moons and would-be waking of the sun.
We glow as strips of light bounce off our feathers as the moon looms in for a longer dark. We watch the shadows of trees grow longer in the dead silence. We try to sing a lullaby for the sleepy, an ode to the longing, a cheer for the sad, a consolation to the grieving and yet we sing not to ourselves. We bask in the glow of the moon, only just a silhouette. We are never iridescent as we want to be. We envy the few who are.
We sing to the content of others. We sing to them for many a different reasons. We all sing the same songs for the different days in our lives. We never tire nor our throats get sore. We may sing with broken voices at times, but we sing still. We are our own songbirds. We are each other's songbirds. We may be out of tune. We may be out of breath but we sing over and over again. We may lose our voices entirely but may we never stop the singing till the last feather.
We are our own songbirds. We chirp to the sounds of our hearts and sometimes heed not the exchange of chemicals across synapses to dying neurons in our brains. We grow accustomed to the battles waged everyday that we get by with small victories. We perch atop our favorite trees and sing our tunes day in and out. We watch the flicker of the sun vanish, its embers sputtering and surrendering to the night. We sing in the dark our musings that we nurture in the day, recalling many a past moons and would-be waking of the sun.
We glow as strips of light bounce off our feathers as the moon looms in for a longer dark. We watch the shadows of trees grow longer in the dead silence. We try to sing a lullaby for the sleepy, an ode to the longing, a cheer for the sad, a consolation to the grieving and yet we sing not to ourselves. We bask in the glow of the moon, only just a silhouette. We are never iridescent as we want to be. We envy the few who are.
We sing to the content of others. We sing to them for many a different reasons. We all sing the same songs for the different days in our lives. We never tire nor our throats get sore. We may sing with broken voices at times, but we sing still. We are our own songbirds. We are each other's songbirds. We may be out of tune. We may be out of breath but we sing over and over again. We may lose our voices entirely but may we never stop the singing till the last feather.
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