Thread: She

She is not a lady.
When she takes her place with the women
around the ornate table
topped with porcelain cups,
she is buried alive.

If she were to release her soul from its cage,
if she were to stand and set the tea to spilling,
if she were to truly breathe;
the button at her throat would break free,
and her voice would shriek like a wild hawk
descending from the sky
its talons open for the kill.

She wants to soar above the fluttering and flapping of the little chickadees.
She wants to dip her wings and be gone; over the rim of the mountains.
She wants to skim the canopy of green where iridescent butterflies
live their entire lives without ever traveling to the jungle floor,
where the carpet of treetops are like receding clouds,
and she can feast savagely on unsuspecting prey.

She will seek the wild places,
where the sky speaks in thunderous afternoon storms.
Places that set her heart to beating fast.
Places that bring waves of loneliness,
Places where she might lose her soul, and in the losing, find peace.
Places where the sounds of little birds are not the whole of the world;
but simply beautiful music played in the background of a much larger universe.

She will be dangerous.
She will seek out the men who clomp through town in their boots,
and those that ride out to the country, trotting their horses.
She will call to them,
not in a self-conscious, coquettish trill;
but the full-throated cry of a predator.

She will alight before a man,
and notice every detail,
the mud covered boots,
the pants that reveal a disdain for puffery,
shoulders that slope casually;
but also the line of his nose too long, and his lips too thin.
It will not matter to her, for he is no soft chittering bird.
He is, like her, a predator;
a hulking man, smelling of earth, and sweat, and sweet rum.
She will not hesitate to close the space between them.

She understands the soaring hawk brings death;
death of the world as she knows it.
She will forever see her children, her husband, the world;
through the cold and steady eyes of the hawk.
There is no going back.
The sky will be her new home; her only home.

She knows fear.
All her life she has fought the flame and dammed the river;
but the hour is late,
and this time she will let the fire burn and the river rage;
for even as the hawk flies free;
it yields to the flow of wind against wing.
It trusts itself to invisible updrafts,
and breezes that sweep in from the sea.