CASIMIR PULASKI DAY

Elio Mikoi

remember being the caged birds that sing 

at first, he looked at the huge yew tree in my family's backyard 

the winter is coming, he must cut the branches now 

he remembered looking at the window and seeing the tree that used to have a lot of branches and now a few. Whose fault is that? 

i don't know. that winter, he tried becoming a waiter at a breakfast place 

there was an attempt to serve plates, set tables, fix the chairs, bring out eggs and sausages, what do you want? 

I really don't know. He doesn't know what to do with his hands but he liked the feeling of serving coffee and accidentally touching the hot coffee pots just to feel something. More than you like cutting the branches with careless effort using your gloved hands? 

Yes, maybe, I don't know. He liked flipping the pancakes, the bacon, flipping the chairs, and watching the place fill with hungry people yet to calm their minds with coffee. He liked the orange juice and whitewashed window sills and waxed floors gleaming against the lights. 

I wanted to be delicate and empathetic. 

That sounds overly something like a monk or a priest would do. 

Like a penance or a confession. Father, Mother, I have sinned, please forgive me. And my hands, these hands what have they done? 

His hands kept on becoming birds and flying away from me and he remained as the lonely goldfinch behind the cage his father placed on that yew tree. Him being you. You are him. And the birds are still you but who are you to them? The threeness of things. 

do you love who you are today? 

yes, no, maybe so. he doesn't have to answer that but it should matter. 

he has a body, he has a face, he has the beauty that men and women alike envied- it doesn't matter.

there were clean sheets on top of his bed, there were soft cottony pillows that held the mass of his head, it doesn't matter. 

it was during the day he lamented his melancholy whores. 

wearing the little black dress from his mother's cabinet, stealing the black veil his sister wore in every Sunday church service 

he looked at the mirror and he liked what he saw, it doesn't matter. 

he wore his father's too-big-suit with a black hand-me-down necktie 

he looked at the mirror and he still liked what he saw, it doesn't matter. 

you missed the point: the mirror is a little judas and the face in the mirror is still a little traitor, the pale body and the languid face were the reflections of a naked hostage wanting to be out but no one can tell which room he was staying in. 

he was still inside the cage. 

he wanted to be in, he wanted to be outside, he wanted to fly around and follow his birds, he wanted the key. 

he stood in front of the mirror with the key in one hand and the cage in the other acting as a scale of justice- his eyes were covered with white silk acting like a blindfold. 

he wanted to move forward when the moon rose from her sleep 

because that was the only choice to be free. 

perhaps everyone in this cage got here somehow and maybe someday everyone will have to leave. everyone being him. 

so what's left? to celebrate the day when the suicide society of poets was tasked to sing about the cage he was in? 

only he knew why the caged goldfinch sings. 

the voice of the bird wanted to be heard as much as he wanted to be a hand and the hand wanted to do something artistic that would challenge the greatest minds. 

but what did you really want? 

someone to pass time with me.

i know you wanted more 

i want to have what everyone has and wants and needs 

he raised his head to see the moon looking at his begging eyes 

cue the lyres of the angels dancing gracefully on the fallen ground, and the violins played by the street performers. that's what they are for. 

and yes, he craned his swan-like neck to bask the dramatic warmth of the city lights acting as the moon. 

To whom does the moon beautifully belong? 

no one really. 

Is there anybody else? 

maybe the boy with the shepherd curls who is now standing in the middle of the artists' park with me. 

right-hand lies, left-hand truths, any way the wind still blows but it doesn't really matter now, does it? 

the wind makes noises like the pangs of a drummer boy on his soft-skinned drums. just like how pains make noises and so does a cry when no one can help 

are you sure there's no one else? 

the boy holding my hand responded as my beloved twin 

he aches what my heart aches 

and speaks to me in a language that only the two of us can understand 

his dark curls mixed with the mess of my own as i shuddered in tears against his shoulder. 

in the morning when the sun goes up 

and the light passed directly to our bodies sleeping on the park bench, coloring the naked shoulders 

his hands caught the birds of my hands and freed the goldfinch behind the cage that was holding me barred 

the birds that used to fly and run away from me. 

that was when i realized that eventually, all birds must land.

this reality is someone else's fiction. the 

world is not for boys like us.