White.

That was the color of the world when everything was prismatic: lights reflecting off each other, emitting the glow I saw in you. There was no happy in me, nor was there in you. But red and green can make yellow in the shadows of grey. Together, it was a pure and iridescent pearl white, a pearl white perched outside my windowsill. In that bird, I noticed a silent smile with the physics of an effortless launch. The further up you went, the more you turned into a speck of yellow tied to my heart strings, a balloon of happy brightening up the world below.

On your back, you carried a burden I never realized was meant to be mine. The subtlety of the situation in my favor, I opened my cracked window and let you in. The magic and the heat of the summer sun were alive in the way that your wings flapped around the room. In the shape of a slight sparrow, your flight was magnetic. You zoomed from one side to the other, dazzling me with your playful dance. So I kept the colors with me always. I never seemed to notice your feathers becoming out of kilter. It was no longer the pearl white produced from agitation in the mouth of an oyster.

This burden was your boundless energy, a crazed thing I wished to claim for myself — for us.

I saw yellow beams in both our hearts, or so I thought. You dragged me up to the skies you used to skim, and from head-to-toe I felt the bubbles of golden joy rise to the surface of my skin. Never had I been so happy. What moved you to fly was what moved me to surrender.

Holding me there, elevated, I never realized the weight on you; we misunderstood each other. In your words and your feathers, I felt detachment as you grew more and more tired of my four walls. You wanted to stay for mere minutes, but for me, the minutes turned to hours, to days, to two full months of meaning.

A caged bird never has room to breathe, no matter how hard it tells itself otherwise.

So back to earth I came, and I let you go. And one day I trust that you will return, bringing even greater heights of exhilaration when we dance in those pearl white lights once again.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.