Stale

They called her robin red with her patch of red skin where her heart bleeds out day after day, veins breaking with every chopped tree and muscles seizing at the dry shudder of a starved land. They called her robin red for her red dress with the white collar that always stained red by hour two of a dying day and she had the greenest eyes and the saddest smile and the birds wouldn't settle outside her window because the sad songs she knew filled their breasts with sorrow too heavy too carry in such hollow bones. They’d fly to the east where’s there’s too much stifling heat and a poverty-wrapped beggar pleads for a drop of life-giving water and a crumb of stale bread and when they turn from the sights of pain her voice catches them again on the barest of cold winds and sweeps their delicate feathers to the west once more where gluttony reigns free in the claws of wealth and self idolization. They see her dark hair and her tear drop eyes and they tell her what they saw and what they know of hurt and they sing together in weaving tones and the soreness stains their chests a sickeningly sticky red that bleeds with the weeps of a breathing corpse half way across the deprived home of all.

They call her robin red with her patch of red skin where her heart bleeds out.