Bird in a Cage

Written for consideration in: "Flash Fiction:'Make a Statement' Contest" 
Word Count: 1096

"God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages." ~ Jacques Deval

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It is in the nature of humans to, when having found a limit or a barrier, charge forward with all intents, purposes and strength, and break through to whatever lies beyond. To our dismay, we most often find another set of limits and barriers beyond the first. We charge forward again.

I lay down beneath an apple tree.

Not because I wanted to.

I fell.

I had been reaching for the farthest lying fruit – as we people so often do – and my footing fell and so did I. I became paralyzed as I met the frosted grass of late autumn and I found myself gazing up with eyes hazy with numbness at the smooth sky. It was blue.

The tree branches above me shivered in the wind. I had to assume it was cold because I could no longer feel the pinch of the chilly air upon my bare legs. Between the crooked fronds of the tree, the sky was broken up into a thousand puzzle pieces. It was a puzzle no one could piece together. It was broken and I was, too.

As the day shed its coats of light, tossing them upon the horizon in a colorful heap, a black bird alighted upon the very branch that I stood upon not long ago. It pranced around the apple until the ripe fruit was shaken loose and fell through to the earth just beside me. I could not take it.

The bird mocked me with its whistled tune, singing of brighter pastures that it would seek out beyond the horizons that I would never travel beyond. Its black wings fluttered against the rising wind and it took flight, leaving the tree to shiver in its absence. I saw the tree for what it truly was, then. A cage.

It was a cage with a wide open door through which the wind could pass and any bird could enter and exit at will. It was my cage.

The branches hung over me like interlocking bars of a prison. After a time, as the night threw a silken embrace over the sky, I came to know my prison. I knew the way the bars crossed each other in a smothering pattern. I learned the curves of the leaves, none of which I had the key to open.

I saw the patchwork sky beyond, glittering with freedom.

It was not until morning that I was found. Deranged and babbling of locks and cages, I was carried inside and placed in bed. I slept for a long time.

I lay beside a window.

That is where the bed was.

I awoke with a start, and yet I did not move. I found I could speak. I could not move a single muscle besides what it took to speak. I could only dream of what I looked like, lying helpless in a musky bed. I could never stand to see a mirror.

I glared out the window, day after day. It was a wavering piece of glass that shifted in the storms to let the howl of wind echo through the house. I spoke to myself silently of the beauty that the light shone upon it. Once I saw the dark shadow of a blackbird and a familiar tune pierced the house. It was gone a moment later, back into the world.

As I lay there, night after day, I began to see what the window really was. A cage.

It was a distorting frame that held me captive. It cast a confusing smudge of secrecy upon the world. I yearned to see the truth, to know the shape of what existed beyond my prison. I could only see the blurry colors. A fog of white descended to cover the Earth and only at night did the sky shift from a blank overcast to the blanket of darkness. The window shivered in the wind, taunting me.

I shouted.

Demanded to be released from captivity. As the whiteness of the world faded into the colors of spring, I was taken outside. I was carried to the garden where there existed a curved trellis. I had married there once, taken a wife beneath a flowering archway.

I stayed there, where my memories were happy.

I lay beneath a trellis.

That is where the couch had been left.

I spent my days there, unmoving. I gazed at the flowering buds that ensconced the white grid. They were pink. Then they were red.

For a while they were beautiful.

One day, as the sun was rising higher into the sky and what I assumed to be heat tanned my bare legs, a bird flitted about upon the trellis, pecking at the flowers. Then in dashed off and sent a tumult of petals and leaves shuddering down upon me. I did not feel them. The color was gone from the trellis all at once, leaving it as a white woven arch, devoid of life.

I began to see the trellis for what it really was. A cage.

The rigid structure encased me in a curvature of confinement. It shivered in the wind, for I assume it must have been cold. I could not feel it. I screamed my protest, rebelled against my imprisonment. I screeched for release, for freedom!

I was carried to the yard.

No trellis curved constricted me, no tree broke apart the earth and no window contorted the image of the world.

I lay beneath the sky.

That is where I was abandoned.

Even the nights felt hot, as if the sun had scorched the sky with an invisible tail of heat and left it to radiate until dawn.

An illusion flew over head, past the stars, and disappeared into the night sky. I hollered at it.

I saw the night for what it really was.

A cage.

The silken cover of the sky was really a choking hood, eaten by moths. I knew it, for I could see the hint of the light of freedom behind it. It was a black hood. I was at the guillotine. The cloth shivered in the cold, for I could see the light winking and shuddering so far up ahead. I assumed it was must have been cold, and now I feel it. It encompasses my brain as I break through the sky in my final victory. Does some unknown freedom await me? I fade slowly, disappearing into the night on illusory wings.

It is a cage.

I am the blackbird.

Some limit, some barrier, always presents itself. We charge forward again. Unfortunately, we find that one day we will meet a barrier we cannot cross, a limit we cannot surpass, and invariably run into it and break our necks.