Day 1 NaPoWriMo - Caterwauling

Caterwauling

In a universe that has no universe,
a planet without planet,
human without human,
blood without blood,
the plants and animals
ate each other talked
over each other shouted
like trumpets over each other;
the planet was LOUD.

But a human that wasn’t human
was a whisper, a breeze
coming through the LOUD trees,
and the bones that were not bones
stayed put in the human spine,
mandible, clavicle, all the icle and ible bones
stayed put, never lifting an arm
or opening a mouth to make noise
never to be noticed, never to shout.

But the birds didn’t like the quiet,
they didn't like the human not human.
They thought human was like a black hole of sound,
the human was like a false wind under their wings,
the human was like falling with no air to catch.
And so they would perch on human’s shoulder
and shout, chirp, chip, chop, spout and spit.
They would hammer their beaks into the trees;
They would pop, tip, top, trumpet, and lumpet
out out out as if their sounds could drown the silence,
but the human absorbed the sound
like shadows blur into night.

Still they would chirp cheep, chip, beep
bop, boop, lip, leep, loop out to the world
that wasn't a world and one LOUD night,
the human grabbed a sparrow by its wing
and threw it to the ground.
All the birds stopped their cacophony and
flapped up into the trees, only the sounds
of their wings shuttering, the trees rustling.
They watched below as the human stood
and scooped up the sparrow.

It wasn't quite dead in a universe
that has no universe and the sparrow
had a soul that had no soul
and the human had no heart to give
the dying bird its breath, heartbeat shallow
tipping tip tipping its way to a death of quiet.
When the sparrow found its final breath,
the other birds saw the bird was like a black hole,
like the absence of wind beneath wings
and they knew the human that wasn't human
was death, the stillness and silence.
Human was the loss of noise, it was darkness,
eyes closed, a complete absence of absence.