Author: Aditi Bedarkar
She built her nest on their windowsill,
On the first day of the year
That brought the lovers closer still.
A New Year’s kiss, then a hopeful heart bid goodbye,
A wish to grow fonder as the year passes by.
Come spring,
Everyone shut in,
In their homes and threshold.
The little songbird saw the two lovers be together alone,
Amidst a world crumbling down,
The seed of a relentless love was sown
Months passed, the year didn’t end,
The bird awoke them every morn,
As the dawn washed away their quarrel of last night, and they fell in love all over again.
Many a night she sat on the sill
and watched,
the human trouble through the eyes of the couple,
of how they suffered and fought,
but still found a hand to hold in the aftermath’s rubble.
The year came to a close,
And the bird knew the humans thought
The pain of those months would leave their race as they rose,
And the next morning shall wipe the memory of human throes.
Little did they know,
Their year and ones to come
Were healed by their love.
If not for this shared isolation,
No time together would have been time enough,
Enough,
To fall and stay in love.
And the little songbird sang,
Of the crossing of our paths only a year ago,
To me and my lover.
The story of twenty-twenty ended in hope, little had I known.
I’d found my forever that year,
The little songbird told me so.