I don’t belong.
Not really.
Alien green
is what they see
first.
Too bright, too strange,
eyes darting,
head cocked
sideways
at every quiet murmur
they think:
I missed.
My garnet wings flick once,
bloodstone weighted and sharp,
trimmed in lapis lazuli—
like bruises dressed up
to look like decoration.
I spit out words
already heard,
but arranged
wrong,
somehow.
Misread.
Misstressed.
Misunderstood.
The amber tip of my beak
clicks closed too late.
They’ve flown.
Every syllable
a shimmy they didn’t want,
a shape they didn’t know.
Sometimes
I swear
I arrived from another world,
not born but dropped,
fluttered down
on unfamiliar branches.
Still trying
to learn
the words
that feel
like home.