“There’s a bluebird in my heart, that wants to get out.”
But I only let him out in winter. I keep him chained by nourishing old resentments and calling these endless “to-do lists” a life.
Our “secret pact.”
“It’s enough to make me weep.”
And I do weep: for what is lost, and for what we don’t even know we’ve lost.
And for that bluebird chained to my heart, that bluebird that longs to flit among the purple berries in the blinding winter sunshine.
Yesterday there was a flock of bluebirds on my beautyberry bushes.
Maybe, just maybe, those bushes will draw that bluebird out of my hungry heart.
I linger at the sight: sun on snow, blue feathers, purple berries hurled here and there.
I weep, too, for the beauty of it all.