O, fragile bird of my breast, why have you stopped singing? Do you tire of my willow branch melancholy, your power-line screech? Do you prefer, little bird, a beaming sonnet, a boastful melody sung from sun-kissed pines? Or is that you’ve suffocated there? Consumed by the prophecy of ruin, did the grief swallow you whole? We should have known that this body is not a home for small things. It can only hold the inconsolable, the mammoth breadth of indignity. How predictable, to crush you beneath my own weight. Perhaps I’ll find you, clipped wings floating feathers to gather lazily at my feet: this empty cage, a shattered beak. When I do find you, we will sing together, shrouded severed or in solemnity, fortified by grace or time, we will chirp maddeningly into the evening air.