The sky opens it always does. From here to the lake the freshly born birds fall pink onto the streets from all the standing trees. I open my arms to catch them and they break against me before breaking against concrete muted wingless flight.

We all wanted to fly and flew groundward with the wind in our ears and the thundering rush a kind of absolution. Toward ending. And our spines shortened and we walked further and further from city to city and from sea to sea, crawling, drowning, our voices arrested deep in our pink throats unspeaking.

This is where you find me. Hungering. With your two hands you open the walls of my heart and find the skeletons of so many just-born birds. Their unopened eyes. Their veined bodies. Their stilled pulse all that might be left of morning.

The walls fall and the heart seizes and in this way we agree again and again to surrender. And there is no one to catch us. And the sky is pink raining dying birds. And who might we have been, as a species, had we caught them?