Choices

You are the bird
that rests on my shoulder
and eats from my palm.

You are free
to fly away
for an hour,
for a day,
a week
or even a month.

You are free
to never return.

And I am free
to stop standing still,
to stop waiting for your claws
to curve around my shoulders.

Indeed,
I am free
to break into a run,
and see water droplets
dive out of my skin
headfirst into the earth.

You are free
to recede so far
you would look like the black eye of the sun,
where your wingspan
would be just a little dot to me.
I would dismiss that illusion
and know your flight
has gone past the edge of tomorrow.

You are free
to prop up a cloud with your wings
or to coin new words in this language of flight,
to let your compass seek a different north.

And I am free too
to let my nose lead me,
to follow the scent of my shadow,
walk past dancing cities
and sleeping villages,
and to leave my footprints on drying river beds.

Yet,
here I am,
seeing you stretch out your talons,
feeling your feathers against my ears
as you take your place on my collarbone
as if it is a pedestal.
Your pedestal.

Coincidences are mathematical, I am told.
Would that explain
why we both are here
of all the places we could have chosen to be?

Do you wonder,
just as I do,
why we choose these freedoms
over all the other ones we could have had?

 

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