A bird is born for the wind, for the wild and the free, and perhaps it was my blindness that kept you here with me.

I tried to shield your wings when the sky was your desire, not knowing that my shelter was slowly drowning out your fire.

I drew water from my deepest well to quench your restless soul, but it was open sky, not safety, that could ever make you whole.

I watched you through the sleepless nights and offered you a home, while your heart was always somewhere in the distances unknown.

I was the cage of wood and wire who mistook herself for love, the weight inside your chest the shape of all I wasn’t enough. And now it breaks, it breaks so deep,

I’m fracturing in the air, my own wings torn to splinters by the love I couldn’t share.

There is nothing left to salvage, not your flight, nor my regret. I dissolve into the quiet of a sun that’s finally set.

Through the fears that move inside me, through the cold and through the ache, I have nothing left of who I was, just the echo of my breaking.

I lost myself in holding on, I drifted from my own, but I see it clearly now at last, and I must face it alone: for birds are born for the open sky, for the wind beyond the door, and my voice, like yours before me, finds its wings, and needs no more.