aviary

for father's day, maybe?

The little bird my father freed from its’ cage:

When the cage door was opened, the sun was so bright out. I instantly
flew straight upwards into the light and nearly blinded myself.
I’d only ever seen the sun through windows and slender, intricate bars.
I didn’t look down at him looking back at me; I’d had enough of humans and their prying hands for a lifetime. Perhaps he even smiled.
I didn’t care. The skies’ hands were gentle.
Mad with freedom, I swept through the trees, hardly looking at anything except to dodge. I crowed in triumph over a battle I didn’t know I had been fighting, didn’t know I’d ever wanted to win. Everything was bright and new and bursting with life.

Eventually, I grew tired, and alighted on a nearby branch. Even the wood felt soft under my claws, and as I gazed about, I heard a song of welcome.
I saw others like me, alight in the sky.
A sudden flash of memory and I remembered him again. I hadn’t looked back.
Had he been Angry? Sad? Joyful? Feeling irritation swell up, I pushed the thought from my mind. It didn’t matter, and I would never see him again anyways.
I caught up with the brethren I had seen, and flapped along as though I had always been there. But, as we traveled further away from familiar skies, my mind kept pushing up images of what his face might have been. A mask of rage. An open, laughing face. An envious one, perhaps.

We alighted down into a crop of trees, and I saw another group of people. Their faces were too distant to make sense of, but I heard my kin flutter about in avoidance. Perhaps they felt they were better off, and I couldn’t disagree.
Nevertheless, as the people faded away, I found myself thinking back to him again. Why couldn’t I get him out of my head? All he had done was open a door, one that had been child’s play for him and a wall for me.
Why did I wish to know what he had said, in farewell?

I waited for the sun to set, when I knew I could get away without being seen. And I swooped after the people that had disappeared, into their homes that never had night, never had the cool, easy dark.
I glanced through their windows, and saw many faces. Old and new, hard and soft, free and tired. I saw faces that were contorted in ways I didn’t think possible, and others smoother than the sky after rain. I saw a few others like me too, their faces wrenching something deep inside me. Some of them might’ve even been human.
But none of them were his. None of them even came close.
It was only when I flew higher, high above them all, that I found what I had missed. Countless glowing lights, signs of life and living, scattered below me.
They mirrored the stars so perfectly that I almost lost my direction. But the lights below did eventually go out, and then there only the people. And all of their faces.

I had to go back. The thought hadn’t finished in my mind before I turned towards the way back. I had to see him again.
The world below became a blur, but the people below remained clear. They lit the way back home like so many lanterns, even in sleep, even as the night sped by. I didn’t know what I would find if I went back. I didn’t even know if I would make it back.
But as I flew above the rooftops, the people below shone like suns.