Birdsong

We live in a TotalitarianState where nothing is as it was before. Our lives are organized, given to us without choice, or the fear of what tomorrow may bring. The State keeps us safe from ourselves. There is no literature art or music, because such things can lead to the perversity of free-thinking. Even the birds aren’t permitted to sing. Their throats cut just enough to keep them alive; for nothing and no one has ever been destroyed by the State, though I have heard of secret lists of those who are no longer with us. Yet, the birds are still here. There is no place for them to fly to. (Nothing exists outside of The State.) But they are silent. So silent, that I am haunted by birdsong.

I wake to it every morning. Through the thickness of the sunless gloom, I hear them calling me back to my life of taking things for granted. But even now, when the world rushes around me like poison gas, and I stand in the midst of it, feeling nothing, I can hear a lark calling its mate. Waiting for her reply. Only five notes. That’s all a lark’s song consisted of from the beginning of history, until now, when there is nothing but forbidden memories that sound to me through silence.

As I file the same papers that I’ve filed everyday since Our Father became the All Empowered Chancellor of Everything Moving, I hear them. Beyond the constancy of speeches filtered through every corner of space and time, they stir me. Inside my gasmask, they cry to me. Crows cawing from the highest tree; competing for heaven, strutting, black-winged and boastful. Like battalions in black, with boots stomping nowhere. Mere birds, valueless creatures who played at owning the world.

We think we own it now.

Such thoughts make me wonder if someday other creatures, larger, more fierce and intelligent than we are, will come and take away our voices too. Will anyone remember us the way that I remember birdsong?

That is why I have the courage to write. That is why I must continue even though I know that someday I probably will be found out. There are spies everywhere. Nothing is private. There is no peace. There is only Our Father.

Sometimes I think I hear footsteps rushing this way, but it’s only my heart beating alongside the magnificence of the winged ones. I used to hate their early morning cacophony of songs. I thought their disharmony was disturbing. But silence is far more obscene.

After I am gone, no one will notice my empty chair. It will be quickly filled and my work resumed without interruption. Life is valueless. We exist in the span and space given, and nothing more. There are no friends. There is no family. But I am not alone. I have birdsong. Haunting me, exquisite. Worth dying for.