by The Cowl Editor on October 25, 2018
Poetry
by Sam Ward ’21
It’s okay. You can look away.
Still fixated at the heap of feathers and blood at our feet:
I’ve seen dozens of dead birds and have had perfectly splendid days.
Perfectly. Splendid.
Perhaps if I knew our correspondence would be,
Stockholm / Lima,
I would have chosen my words more carefully,
Or I would have trusted the omen.
Picking apart the dwindling hours we had left,
Plausible pleasure from a desire for purpose.
I wish I could run it back and leave.
Really, I just wish I would have left the corpse alone.
Because I lost my autonomy,
Following morbid thoughts,
Reaping what I sowed,
Aviary horrors only curses could produce.
Stepping into the antiquated nest,
Searching for adventure, settling for misery.
Shield me from the onset,
Clipped wings are anything but correct.
Me, like a lemming leaping to my death,
My fate leading me astray, naïve.
The wind would reject my wings.
Oh how, the dead bird still sings.