compendium

i know why the caged bird sings

i know why the caged bird sings
and he names the sky his own

It wasn't entirely due to the oxygen. The trees and flowers and vegetation slipping away, I mean. When the atmospheric levels increased, fires caught more frequently and much more violently.

I was a troubled kid before all of this. I guess I still am now. When I was eleven I lit an abandoned barn on fire with a lighter and a garbage can full of flammable paraphernalia. I'd never seen something so monstrous and beautiful at the same time. It was hard to believe the barn was burning down when the flames kept reaching up, up, up, licking up the corners of the sky, stretching everywhere with an ineluctable, angry hunger.

It wanted me, too. It even wanted to destroy its creator. I think that was why I liked it so much - I liked being in power, having control over something that still breathed to destroy me. It was almost literally holding your fingertips just an increment above a candle flame. It was so close you could feel the heat, you could hear the sounds, but you could make sure it couldn't touch you.

I could run. The fire couldn't.

When wildfires decimated forests and woods, I decided to stick to the city, even as dangerous and lonesome as those became. I decided to stop setting fires. God knew we didn't need any more destruction in this superannuated world.

We have grown beyond this.

Our new oxygen gives us power that has always been hanging above us like a sword on a string.

The tables have turned. Whatever god you believe in doesn't control you anymore.

You're powerful. You can run faster. Run longer. Fight harder. Survive better. Grow taller. Become stronger. Hold control, dangle power. Assert yourself. Pound a fist at the sky because it doesn't belong to the angels anymore it belongs to us.

You can be happy now.

Unless you're already dying.

They stole the sky. So I went and stole it back.