FLEDGLINGS OF WAR

SPOKEN WORD BY ALICIA HOCH

I stepped off the bus to find the corpses of trees a burning village for sparrows. Throats meant for singing were screaming as they searched their decimated homes. Mirror images of parents pushing through a crowd of children for their own, desperately calling out the names of the dead. You hope for the worst.

You hope that the fledgling died upon impact from the bomb instead of suffocating under the rubble the same way you are suffocating now in frantic panic.

But hope is the thing with feathers and nothing flies in the ash-choked sky.

What is the song that means ‘I love you’? What notes capture ‘I will see you again’? Where is the space in heaven for the ones with hands that could fit in your palm whose wings were torn off from the blast?

Children are pulled away from their makeshift pyre of soil and crushed leaves.

Told in hushed tones that there are too many bodies to bury and not enough dirt to spare for bloodied feathers

Blue jays and goldfinches hop around the playground.

The hunger in their stomach is hidden by juvenile joy.

A nightingale trembles, malnourished body crushing its chest.

It opens its mouth and begs for food.

A double-headed eagle catches it and takes it home, teaches it his language, his culture. Replaces its mother’s lullabies with national anthems, replaces its memories with a filtered history.

A gaunt face sees her eyes in the soldier that has just shot her husband.

A cowbird catches a glimpse of her wings in a flock of sparrows. She smiles, aching heart finally slowing. She has succeeded.

Her fledgling, her baby, will never have to worry about tall men ransacking her house. Her fledgling, her baby, will scowl at protests instead of sacrificing her voice to survive. Her fledgling, her baby, will have a nest when the bombs fall.

When the fire is over, bones rest in the ashes of their homes. A molting chick spreads them.

It prays that towering trees will spring from the gore, that their armored trunks will protect him from the poachers of innocence. Uniforms grin as their orchard is planted.

The sides of beaks bleed from biting at wire cages. Baby teeth have fallen in pools of blood outside of crates. When their eyes open for the first time in their life, it’s to blink away tears.

Far away we marvel at the rubble, envisioning the buildings we can make instead of recognizing what was there.

Parentless children make a brainwashed generation and dead birds make good ornaments for hats.

But pixelated screens can’t make you smell the smoke.

No news article can capture the wail of a screaming baby. No microphone can grasp the sound of that baby laying lifeless.

We don’t recognize the lack of songbirds. We don’t realize how loud the world should be. We don’t recognize the scars as wounds. We don’t realize that bombs can drown out everything.

We don’t realize that a child can recognize the air raid siren faster than its mother’s voice, faster than a cardinal’s song. Fledglings sing to themselves when they sleep and dream of the perfect tune with a limitless imagination. The imagination of a child.

What songs were the birds singing when the trees fell?

What dreams were the children dreaming when gunfire lulled them to sleep?

I like to hope that they found the music sheets for ‘peace.’