Artist Statement
A lot of negative thoughts and feelings can resurface during the isolation and endless free time of quarantine. This piece is about the nature of those thoughts and how they can impact our everyday lives.
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Sometimes a bird lands on you
by Alexandra Miller
Sometimes a bird lands on you. Unusual and out of place, it perches on your shoulder but nevertheless you go about your business. Until two more come and make their homes on your body. You make it through the day but the weight of the birds is noticeable. No matter what you do you cannot shoo them away. You sleep in the sun and spend time with loved ones but the birds refuse to leave. More and more arrive to feed on you until suddenly an entire flock sinks their talons into your skin and you fall to your knees letting them peck away.
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The birds can come slowly or all at once. Sometimes you wake up and your bedroom has become an aviary. Sometimes there is a single bird perched for weeks. The knowledge that more are coming but you don’t know when makes that final feeding all the more painful. You think it’s only one bird, I can handle that until suddenly you’re face down under a feeding frenzy and you just take it while wondering how all the birds got in. You don’t try to escape them or shield yourself, it is a futile fight-- you know because you’ve tried. It’s easier to let them be since they will only leave on their own accord. So there you lay, splayed out under a hundred screaming beaks and flapping wings because it is familiar and comfortable and easy to just lay there.
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When they decide to leave, they exit as they came. They can take off as a unit and fly away until they’re black dots so far in the distance you’re not sure they were ever real. But they can also leave slowly. One by one their weight is lifted and you can only hope they continue to leave at a steady pace. Usually one stays, perched dutifully at your shoulder as a reminder they are not truly gone. That the birds will forever live with you. That you can travel to the ends of the earth and back again, but the birds can fly just as far.