You and I sat on a hill under the shade of a pear blossom tree. It bloomed white, free-falling into my lap like snowflakes blown by wind. We were both encaged, you and I, you by the bars I built for you, I by the whitewashed walls of my world. I held your key, delicate, gold, and you held mine. Just a

Click

and you were between my fingers, so close to freedom. Oh, I needed you so as I peered at the snowy looseleaf-rolled paper that lay in my lap. You knew how to escape, how to leave your cage behind, and you knew where to go. How lucky you were; I was but a ghost, drifting in the wind, caught in the current of my own body. I needed your wings to fly far and high and wide. I needed your strength to carry pieces of my transparent heart tied with a white ribbon to your leg. I pleaded you to brave the darkness, to lead me to him. To my love.

But I didn’t know that you had to dodge spiralling bullets and hop over kamikaze grenades, choking as their sooty breath clogged your lungs. I didn’t know that when you could no longer push through the night, you fell into a hole in the ground and strove to remember the light, to no avail. And I had no idea that when you finally brought my heart to him, he was staring, wide-eyed, at the inside of a dark bag, dried blood sprayed over his face and neck. So how could I have known that his team read my letters and tied new ones to your leg so that my clear heart wouldn’t fall, smashing into thousands of glass fragments?

All I knew was that when you tapped on my window late one night, you were gray, and I couldn’t find your white feathers.