I Feel

Sparrows fly young and free in the pure skies, and Saoirse lulls her hands across the keys of the grand piano in favor of watching them cry gently with the sun. As she looks on, they dance in loops and pirouettes, like smoke from a dream come true, like snowflakes that swirl just out of your gloved grasp on ethereal winter mornings. 

Crack. The pain shocks more than hurts, now, and Saoirse tugs her hands out from under the piano lid, where she knows without a glance that her mother's glowing fury will be blooming across her knuckles for the third time this week. She does glance, however, back to the window, pursing her lips in disappointment when she sees that the birds have flown away, disappearing away from the view of the iron bars that decorate every window of this prison that she grew up in. 

“Again!” is the only word Saoirse's mother needs to command, and this time, Saoirse picks up her fingers without complaint to slide them across the keys in perfect form, playing with its wildly variable melodies and precise cadence in a dangerous balancing act she has known since she was five. Her mind is already elsewhere.

One day, Saoirse knows, she will dance and laugh and run beneath the sapphire skies, just like those sparrows - even if forever chained by smashed wine glasses and littered scars and her family, her brother. One day.

i am the soft rot of a trampled flower

and you were the sparrow, broken

free of its chains, eating away

at me, so you could grow.

and i stay, rooted to the earth

in fear

forever always pastpresentfuture

i am scared of heights, scared of falling, scared of getting hurt.

better bleed out

in the house you know, than a home you

don't