cw: none

That’s the thing about love though,
isn’t it?
Love comes back, and no matter
how you bite and snip:
love comes, love lingers.
It lets you climb out of your shell.
And one day that canary flew –
it flew so far away,
so fast and so wild,
and it sang the whole time.
And all the cruelty that had burdened it,
all those harsh hands –
they were gone.
But the gentle hands found the canary again,
and the canary learned
it had always sung,
had always flown,
had always had everything it ever needed,
even though it was ripped away.

And it stilled eats black-ink-stained vellum flowers sometimes,
the hunger for words unable to escape it,
but it eats birdseed too,
and it sings,
and it flies with a flock.
And that’s love –
that’s the canary –
it is the final step in the story:
salvation.