Chirps Incessantly

Relief pooled in the creases of my knuckles as hands waltzed across the melodious keys of Cordelia, the periwinkle typewriter wiser in years that I. The hands of an ancient clock, hung askew on a wall dappled with eclectic memories, remained frozen at two forty-one, but the internal one, tick tick ticking behind flesh and bone, knew it to be later. Letters, slipped beneath festive paper, metallic bows, and carefully positioned ribbon, kept me perched like a nocturnal bird at my desk, and despite a diminutive sleep littered with tangled limbs and fervent dreams, I woke to a body content. In my sanctuary, a bed only a quarter used for housing a slumbering body, three quarters used for the collection of books and journals and pens and moccasins, knitted hats and oversized sweaters and lilac candles, I devoured a third of a novel, like an Oliver Twist starved of literature. I digested the words with grapes that popped between my teeth; a breakfast for the romantic soul, it sustains my heart which chirps incessantly, a baby bird ever ravenous and demanding. And hope for these snow-blanketed days, stars strung within my pupils and threads of burning gold iris, keeps it settled within the nest of woven ribs, feathers ruffled in anticipation. Days of literature, tender toes testing the waters of Buddhism, honey romance and thrift stores, humbling humanitarianism, and the cultivation of my wildflower garden behind rebellious waves and porcelain skull, my eternal self-created peace, make these Winter months seem more like Spring.