You said I was a beautiful bird.
I listened to you and absorbed every word.
You caged me up, I flew straight into a trap,
but I liked the cage so I kept coming back.
Being replaced was something I didn’t foresee,
I wanted desperately to stay but I begged to be free.
One day you came and opened the cage,
I could stretch out my wings and fly on an open page.
I could soar and I could touch the sky.
You taught me that I could fly right through
any dark, cloudy, or stormy sky.
You showed me that I could fly
farther than I thought I could go.
You showed me all that I could know.
But I wasn’t the pretty bird
you made me out to be.
Little did I know
there were other birds far prettier than me.
In reality, I was a paper crane
floating in the sea,
slowly drowning.
I was soaking up water
until I couldn’t swim any longer,
and I sank down farther and farther.
I wasn’t all you said I could be.
I could’ve been better,
I could’ve flown.
If only I had known.
There I were,
a ringed out broken piece of a bird.
I washed up on the shore
where a girl once stood,
who is not anymore.
That’s where I was picked up,
dried out in the sun’s rays and
folded once more
into a beautiful bird.
I felt safe in the light of that shining sun,
that I thought had saved me.
But then I was burned.
For a fleeting moment I thought I could fly again
but in that beautiful fire I met my end.
Because I couldn’t fly any higher,
I dove right into that deceiving fire
and before your eyes I burned in the flames
until I was ash, and erased my name.
But then, from my past,
I arose and was cast
into a new shape and form,
once paper but now stone.
I stand upon the pyre where the old me burned,
so everyone knows what happened to the bird
who was someone she was not,
who was in pain but never fought,
and flew without thought;
she got what she sought.
Now she must live
back in the cage where she wanted to sit,
except this cage is her own creation;
any hopes of escape are simply her imagination.