The cutout bird
In my head, there’s a bird.
The doctors, as if they can hear it singing,
wish to cut it out of me.
It sings in my head, sometimes of despair,
in tunes that fill the air.
Everybody in me is a bird, beating its wings.
Every version of me.
I’ve starved it; it’s hungry.
It will eat me crumb by crumb.
Its songs drown in drowsy
wave after mad wave,
but I will miss its singing.
There is a bird inside all of us.
In some, the bird is gone.
They dissect it out of you
to marvel at its songs,
to pull out its heart
and find its music.
And those they cannot remove,
they make you drown it
or cage it away from the air.
And when they think they have a facsimile,
They’re done with the autopsy,
they stitch the dead thing back in.
The yellow daisy becomes grey,
and no longer can I hear it sing,
To this day.
Notes
See Site News article about C. Day.