The Mockingbird

I got jealous of the nightingale, so I became the mockingbird. 

To feel such beauty run down my throat, seep into my blood, course through my veins, 

borrowing such majesty for a moment, 

catching attention before I faded away like honeysuckle in September, 

or lightning bugs in the day. 

Cage it up, 

throw away the key, 

let me fill the skies with my melody,

its not sultry, its not silver, but can't it be pretty all the same? 

Let the king keep that old finch, let it spend its days knowing that I sing its song,

I’ll teach you what life is all about - what sopranos brush off in their tremble of vibrato -

my throat is dry as I try to voice thoughts I can only imagine -

but I don’t know why the nightingale sings so well, so sweet, threading through the trees like the salvation of breeze cutting through the humidity of rafters.

An angel in a flock of sparrows - why so blessed?

My marrow, it aches, my throat is dry from stomaching the soul my body did not supply.

It fights against the possession, the infection, scratching my cells like briars, 

scoring against me, and purging shrapnel of my individuality too.

Silent in the tree,

empty of everything,

I cant see what I am supposed to be,

mockingbird, nightingale, how can you know who I am if I do not know myself?

My heart is suffering, trying to beat in knotted arteries that have been strewn about by the thorned hands of anxieties only thieves know - out into a mess I had stressed it into to be adored by others who only mistook me for a nightingale,

and nothing else.

*

This poem is about how we wish we had the features someone else has. Maybe you wish you had blue eyes instead of brown, were taller by an inch or so, had “good skin”, a beard, whatever you think would make you “perfect.” For the mockingbird, this was the nightingale’s song. Things were fine at first, but, the mockingbird forgot what made them them and weren’t happy who they were in the end. You were made to be unique, and we are all beautiful in our own ways, remember that, and look for what makes you truly yourself.