like the tiny birdling breaking through its own shell

something inside my chest pecks with its sharp beak

stabbing at my breast, painfully, cracking

open the shell of me, one tiny fracture at a time

it will have its way out eventually

this Phoenix

and in the process I will die

someone will light my funeral pyre

and from my ashes it will rise into the sky

this great and beautiful feathered freedom

while I lie cracked open and dead and burnt to ash

it will soar beyond anything I ever could have become

— Able Boodha