Life has been floating by. I stopped writing and I stopped taking photographs. I just couldn’t find it in me. I think there was too much to feel and be a part of lately.
After Mia’s due date passed, I couldn’t quite come back from it. The day itself was as difficult as I had anticipated, but there was a heaviness in the weeks to follow that made life slow and tired. I feel forever changed, touched by death.
I spent a short time with my parents in BC. One afternoon I said to my mother “I am to you what Mia is to me. You must love me so much.”
My mom just smiled.
Slowly, I find myself coming back to my words.
And I wrote something about my daughter. It was too big to be a poem, and too small to be a story. So here it is, rough, but loved – a little piece of writing from my heart.
I waited for you, for a very long time, since the beginning of the winter, since the beginning of time. You promised you would come one summer, and that one day we would meet, one day we would fly together, and my heart would be complete.
I was longing for you, and every day I would gaze at the skies, knowing I was closer to seeing you, each time the sun would rise. And every night, as I rested my head on my pillow after a long day, I would look to the stars and imagine them to be the small sparkling stepping stones you would take to find me.
I planted roses for you, so that they would blossom when you came. I figured that you would think they were beautiful and they might remind you to stay.
And then I parted the clouds for you, and I asked the rain to stay away, I asked the winds to be gentle, so that you could find your way.
I told everyone you were coming. I told everyone your name. I told the world how enchanting you are, how bright, how dazzling, how glorious you are to me. When the world knew about you, she waited for you too.
I spent my entire lifetime praying, that someday we would meet, at the place that we once promised, where the land meets the sea. And I waited for you, in the sunshine and in the pouring rain. I didn’t care about anything, I just needed to see you again.
I waited for you, wrapped in blankets on a mountaintop. I hoped you would burst to life amongst all the stars and that I could watch and bask in your presence, like I used to watch the fireworks. I waited for you at the stream where the trees dip so low their leaves dance in the water.
All this time, I waited and waited but you never came.
And at last I saw you, in the middle of a rainy day. You were flying so high above me, sunlight and rain glittering on your wings. You were so free and even more magnificent than I had imagined, singing a song that only my heart knows. I could not speak, when I first saw you. I could not tell you how much I had missed you. My breath escaped through a trapped door in my chest.
I watched you soar high above me, proudly and preciously, and I closed my eyes and felt a smile curl on my face. I am such a foolish girl, I thought. All this while, I had thought that you belonged to us, but now I see that you never did. Rather, this earth and her spaces in-between, the sun and all her wildflowers, the moon and her oceans, and my deep, cracked, waiting heart – they all belong to you.
It’s been lifetimes since we were together, and I now I know that you can’t stay. My roses are wilting, my voice is silence on my lips, but you say
spring will come again,
and you say that
one day I will sing again
But maybe you will never know what it is to wait for something so beautiful it touches your life only once,
and maybe you will never know what it is to ache for something,
because i was aching for you,
my friend that never came,
the song that was never sung,
my little bird who flew away.
I love you, my little bird.
