Bird Guhl by Anthony and the Johnsons

I am bird girl,

I am bird girl,

I'm bird girl now.

I've got my heart here in my hands

I've got my heart, here in my hands now.

And I've been searching for my wings,

I've been searching for my wings some time.

I'm gonna be born

gonna be born into soon the sky

I'm gonna be born into soon the sky.

'Cause I'm a bird girl

and the bird girls go to heaven,

I'm a bird girl

and the bird girls can fly,

bird girls can fly,

bird girls can fly.

Cleo can feel it bubbling, this terrifying furnace underneath her skin, popping and frothing, it simmers and threatens.
She knows she'll be leaving in a blaze of glory, an explosion, a climax of fire and drums and screams. She thinks, I am outside of this world, I am outside of you all, one day I will be flying free.

Cleo chews the inside of her lip, and thrusts out her chest and worries her teeth with her tongue. Cleo doesn't know when to speak, or what to say, she forgets what you're meant to do.

She thinks about her father and desires him too much, and dreams about his hands, and wants to touch his face. She thinks about her boy and his suffocating kindness, she thinks about her mother and how she seems so diluted and so weak.

They say she's ill, her mother, they told her that she's not well at all.
Cleo hears but doesn't really listen, and she knows its bad but doesn't feel the pain.
If everyone you love dies, or leaves, or disappears, who do you become? Cleo validates herself through other people, other human beings proving her existance. When there's no one left then she can only fade away, or burn up like a phoenix.

She always chooses fire.

Cleo tears some music paper from the book and scribbles, she writes and rubs and spits, clenches fists and pummels at the page. Sheet after sheet is torn to shreds until it says what she is really trying to say;

It will take a lot for me
to believe you if you ever say you love me
If you even maybe just like me a little bit
I won't trust you for years
- I will doubt it
until you get so tired
of fighting that you leave me.
And I will be proved right.

But being right is lonely
I would rather be wrong wrong wrong
Every day of my life
if it meant you would stay
and never leave.

She writes his name on an envelope, and his address and puts two stamps on just in case and walks to the post box, red as her shame, and her hand hovers at the slot; the slot is a choice, the slot is honesty and weakness. It is freedom.
But bad people don't get choices, bad people like her should not speak, should not cry, their breath should not be heard.
So with a lighter all is turned to ash, the ink and ghosts of music rise in flame, the words evaporate to passing thought.

She turns away, she zips her lips, and throws away the key.

Mother

your spine is a set of piano keys,
each hollow bone tinkles
and plucks
and the tune is your heart beat
and the sky is my home.

In your mouth are teeth made
of smoke
and words false as air
that wrap me up.
they wrap and twist and turn.

on the swing in the park,
boys kiss me and
taste your bitter hertitage on
my gums, their lips burn
because of you.
i pass on the disease.

have you ever really touched me?
i cant remember now
your fingers in my hair.
did you buckle my shoe
or lick my envelopes so
i wouldnt cut my tongue?
or was that someone else?
it must have been

with you
everyday, i cut my tongue.

There's a boy on the bus. He's not the same as the girls at school that Cleo wraps around her fingers, he doesn't let himself get used and moulded into what Cleo wants. Cleo wants people to manipulate, but he is much too stubborn.

She learnt from her mother all the ways to control people, the way her mother controlled her, so easy to learn. But he's too real, too sharply focused, too nice. Cleo thinks, "Inside I'm dancing", but her feet are firmly stuck to solid ground.

Cleo plays a game, she tests people, pushes them to limits, measures them with abstracted nonsense.
If I sit down before you, you love me
If I get in at exactly 4.38, you love me
If you take a sip of tea...now, you love me
If you sneeze twice, you love me
If I see more than three birds today, you love me

Birds. Cleo sees magic in flocks of birds, she wants to float and fly away, but knows she never can - hatred makes you heavy. A thousand ballons wouldn't do it, not if they were filled with gas, not if you tied her to a space rocket or strapped her to an albatross, she will always be a dead weight. Her heart is a big flat stone.

Cleo plays a game, she tests herself, pushes herself to the boundaries of sanity. Makes herself repeat and repeat the same phrase on the piano, the same song, over and over and over till she gets it right. She thinks; If I get it right, you'll love me.

Father

Preffering to be alone, she would
lock herself in the bathroom and
stand in front of the small mirror
beneath the wall heater, which
she let blow hot, warming
the frozen coldness of the tiles

Slowly, undressing herself in that
close light, with imaginary miles
between her and him, she
was almost comforted by
her own hands caressing herself,
imagining they were his.

Palms on the wall, face flat against
it too, she tried to force out the
tears that blocked the way to
happy relief. But if no pain seeks
to leak - what can you do?

Preffering to be alone, she would
lock herself in the bathroom
each time hoping it might
bring him back to her.

It's all her fault, and she knows it. Cleo burns with the guilt, always feeling her face and skin and hair must be bursting into flames with this shame. Because Ma' had a baby and it died, but more than a baby, Ma' had an answer and a cure and a new hope, and it all died too, it died with the little baby boy.

And there was blood and shouting and Cleo was in the way, standing in the way not moving or breathing, because it hit her then that she'd made it all happen. She closed her eyes and wished for her mother to only want her and only need her and to never have another child to destroy; if I can't be loved by her, she thought, can I not be the only one destroyed by her? It's a dismal title but at least it means something. Now all that wishing has plucked the baby out of life. He never even got to cry and Cleo would give anything now to hear his midnight screams ringing through the house.

And that house becomes a prison, its hell, its a hole that her mother keeps digging deeper and deeper, scratching into the earth with her bleeding fingers and her endless tears drowning them all. Cleo thinks, I am drowning in you.

The solution is to pick up all the misery and make herself the root cause, the reason, the catalyst - all of it now, is dumped on her head. Her father, the baby, her mother, the sadness and anger and constant confusion. But it's ok, it suits her. Death becomes her.