Rockish Heart
Everything must be light to follow the birds
I moved around my car and the black towhee rushed off, thinking only of predators and bird things. But how could I? With my twenty overweight pounds in the paunch my mom scolded me for since ten. Three leg surgeries and the rod in my shin below my closed-off mind, even my heavy rockish heart, always aching and grunting for more of this, less of that. It can't just be the bones that are light in the Birds. Can it? All the organs, the mind, and finally, the arms must know how to swoop the wind underneath them, how to bank and to turn, how to flare hair before landing. All of this must be learned.
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Damn, I really like this one. Maybe I will submit it somewhere after some editing.
-JNG
There is always in the human a desire to drift to another side - toward transgression, or toward a brief change of form, as if life itself could be tested from outside the self.
I liked this. ‘It can't just be the bones that are light in the Birds. Can it?’ This bit in particular had me thinking a whole lot. Thank you for sharing it.