(Prompt response to Twenty Little Poetry Projects

Prompt explanation of Twenty Little Poetry Projects rules at: https://thepoetrymarathon.com/blog/the-poetry-marathon-prompts/prompt-for-hour-three-5)

Hope is the thing with feathers
She will not be able to speak, to see
The time will come
Merry will she not be
What cannot be said will tie her tongue
Unsaid, unspoken
Her soul sinking with the disappointment of it
The lights will dim
All may be lost
The only touch remaining will come from the fingertips you cling to the cliffs with
Yet the mines, the anvil will call again
She and you and I
Will sing
Well, perhaps sing is too kind a word for the sound that will be made
Yet the tune, the beat, will persist
The miners hope
The bird, kept breathing in its custom iron lung
Will bless, curse our hopes in yellowed morning light
So encouraged, I shall follow it
Shaping myself back into being
As the transcendental canary folds me
Into a new origami day
With an “ohayo” on its breath
She, I, we – may yet learn the petrichor of hope
Even as sight and light fail
The refrain is the awful truth of pain
Birds fly free – but me?
I am made of flocks of yellow origami
Bound together by only a breath of hope