A Single Bird

A single bird would rip it like a silk,
and it does.
The sky, or what I thought was the sky,
now open.
Tattered along the edges of this tear.
Not so big, but alarming nonetheless.

Where is that bird, and why did she
rip into the fabric of my reality?
My bubble of what was?

Imperfect under its shelter,
it was - is - still my reality.
Predictable, even.
A me. A you.
A life understood.

But now I cannot see anything
but the tear... that opening.
I feel the beyond and its
forced fracturing of my what is.

That damned bird!
I am no seamstress
but I have learned to mend.
As imperfect, ragged
as my skills may show.

I want the bird.
I want her to return the piece she's taken,
as I'm not sure how well
I can stitch the gap without it.

There is something comforting
in the sanctity of what was.

I can already feel the impossibility
of forgetting the existence
beyond the bubble.
Denial feels safe.

My mending skills may not be capable
of shutting out a new reality.
May not be able to protect me
from the inevitable.

I guess, on some level, I knew
the sky fabric was not meant to remain
forever in tact.
Yet I didn't realize its fragility either.
One little bird.
One.
​
And now me.
Standing beneath a fraying sky of what was,
uncertain - yet now curious -
of what's beyond.
Now recognizing my choices.
Bird chasing, sewing up the sky,
waiting for full dissolution, or
perhaps seeking and making myself willing
to discover what's beyond that
I never knew existed.

Inspired from a line in a poem by Ellen Bass: "a single bird would rip it like a silk."

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