A child cries in a mirror

A child's joy was taken at gunpoint in a long, dark tunnel on a winter night~ as clouds drifted, whispering subconscious fears, stirred by music played by demons, loosed like wildfire in a room of mirrors. A bird chirps~ as if begging the clouds not to crash on the earth... the weight of iniquities, loosened by fire, now too overwhelming for the sky to bear. Still in that uncertainty— the child strutted barefoot to a home that shifts with each darkness. Each night, comforted only by an angel who sways with the drifting winds, yet can only begin to lift the curse burned into the child’s mind by a woman who could give birth but could not nurture. The bird’s chirrup held no anger— only the echo of the child’s cry, which had stolen the peace of the night. It half-hopped, half-leapt, desperate to shear flesh from the bodies of the child’s parents with its beak. After all, the command was for men not to kill, not for birds— only that the child’s parents had long avoided the valley of death where the bird makes its nest. The bird could sense the child's silent cry for freedom... and for justice. But how can it tell the tale to a fish, unmasked, unfeathered, unheard beneath the waves? Still, the parents’ prayers not to “kick the bucket” float near its ears, swimming like windswept regrets. They are like all men— hearts full of temptation and wickedness, yet ever avoiding the valley where the bird waits.