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A recorded reading of “The Crown of Birds I Did Not Choose”. If the player does not load, use the original audio source.
They crowned me with necks I never hatched. Long beaks, curved thoughts pecking holes in silence. A box was built around me, tight as truth, bleeding at the corners like secrets too loud to forget. They told me it was protection. I call it performance. Each red throat that rises from my skull speaks in a different hunger. They fight for sky, but I am anchored — legs in lace, boots polished with denial. Below, the birds refuse to fly. Feathers furl like secrets kept too long, and beady eyes blink at what I have become. Inside this cage of angles, I am both the thing and the hiding from it. Drip by drip, I unmake the walls — blood for shame, milk for memory. One day I’ll crack and pour myself out. Or perhaps I’ll grow a neck of my own, singing nothing but my name.
Lyrics
They crowned me with necks I never hatched. Long beaks, curved thoughts pecking holes in silence. A box was built around me, tight as truth, bleeding at the corners like secrets too loud to forget. They told me it was protection. I call it performance. Each red throat that rises from my skull speaks in a different hunger. They fight for sky, but I am anchored — legs in lace, boots polished with denial. Below, the birds refuse to fly. Feathers furl like secrets kept too long, and beady eyes blink at what I have become. Inside this cage of angles, I am both the thing and the hiding from it. Drip by drip, I unmake the walls — blood for shame, milk for memory. One day I’ll crack and pour myself out. Or perhaps I’ll grow a neck of my own, singing nothing but my name.
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