“Black Birds”

By Isabel Sharma

There were nights when I walked home alone

fell down on my bed

and when I peeled my shirt off my shredded body

I thought of the day when hands that weren't mine had done the same thing

a lullaby filled the air that night

laced with a black bird's song

but my human skin is hidden behind my eyes

and I could never really tell what it looked like

or if I even smiled to the song

or whether I just grimaced as the soft air around me revealed the pain

of the thorns piercing through my skin

I could never think quite straight

loose threads everywhere

and once one thread is pulled

the whole world unravels with it

I shivered to think that I could still be alive

but I didn't move

and I thought of the little black bird that crossed my path on the way home

as we both hurried through the dark

but I couldn't really breathe

and my chest felt empty but still it weighed on me

like the sky pressing into the mountains

I never cried that night,

though if I could force my body to be my own again I probably would have cried forever

I opened my eyes against the endless black of the room

and the invisible ceiling that stretched into the night sky

I listened to the memory of the black bird's twittering

I thought maybe I could float into the night for a while and live as a bird

or at least as a ghost

If I finally closed my eyes I never noticed,

the black of my house the same as inside my eyes

I breathed in the bird's song through my cracking bones

all night I wished my body were a bird's

but still I longed to fix the holes in my shirt

Author's Note:

I have a love-hate relationship with poetry because it forces me to be vulnerable to the incongruous torrent of emotions I find in every aspect of the world. But it also allows me to experience those emotions authentically, and I am forever grateful for the art of writing