“Broken-Winged Bird” by Brice Maiurro
In China, they built a glass bridge where people can walk out and stare straight down to the bottom of a giant canyon, three thousand feet below. They say that several times a day, tourists will walk out to the middle of the bridge and become stunned when they look straight down at the vastness below them. They will freeze, unable to move, some have delusions that they are about to fall.
This is me right now. I have stepped out onto the bridge and how bravely I took step after step to the center of the canyon, but now I’ve looked down, and I have seen the face of God and He wasn’t smiling. No, She wasn’t smiling at all. In fact, They were just looking back at me less like a parent and more like someone across the room. That moment no one talks about. The conversations between you and an acquaintance you’ll never make acquaintance with. That is
God, and it is paralyzing. To realize that the vastness is not still. It’s moving and rapidly. Bugs crawling under rocks, boulders chucking themselves into rolling rivers, shadows of birds swinging through pompously blocking a small cell of sunlight. It’s a lot to realize. To realize you may be 3,000 feet suspended in the air but if you stand too long, if you stare too long, you might just think you’re falling, and if you stare longer yet, you might just be. Caught by nothing but wind and the music of this stomach drop. This punch to the inside of your heart. This realization that the wings of the stage have taken off, they’ve taken your coat, your hat, your cane and all you have now is the stage. You hold tightly onto your microphone until that too is taken away and all that remains of every pixelated cell of your sturdy footing is you.
It is you and every set of eyes ever. The eyes of your mother. The eyes of the great judge. The eyes of critics. The eyes of time, of death, of sweetness, of morning breath, of every cancer, every sun and moon, the eyes of a sideways love half-buried in your pillows, or at least the potential of one. And something whispers in your ear “speak” but you don’t. Your lungs have been replaced with coarse bags of sand and your heart is a hot air balloon, weaning off of propane. Your heart is a blue flame in a red world, and so you crank it. You slowly twist the knob and let loose an evensong for a chorus of morning ears. You let loose eulogy for pain. You let free the broken-winged bird you never knew you swallowed. If you’re lucky. And in the moment of deafening applause you hear nothing. You are not there. You’re floating over the bridge still, you’re consumed by the overwhelming identity of existence. You feel. If you’re one of the lucky ones. And when it resumes, the people blur like shaken up film, the days are moonless nights, the moons are sunless days and it’s somehow both ambient and distant.
It’s somehow shrunken and expansive.
Your blue flame becomes you.
The red world turns to your distinct shade of blue.
This is not sadness. This is not some painting.
It’s much more, and it’s incredible really.
The glass cracks just a little,
and there looking down on the vastness,
and elsewhere as you finish the last line
of your best poem
you realize,
this is not the holy moment.
They all are.
About Brice Maiurro
He/Him/His
Brice Maiurro is a poet from Earth. He is the author of Stupid Flowers and Hero Victim Villain. His poetry has been featured by The Denver Post, Tilt West, Boulder Weekly, Suspect Press and Birdy Magazine. He is the Founding Editor of South Broadway Press. In 2019, Westword Magazine recognized him as a Colorado Creative for his contributions to the Colorado Arts Community. You can find more about him at www.maiurro.co.
Photo courtesy of J. Mark Tebben (@jmarktebben)