Splat across the concrete like a raw egg dropped 

from a rooftop and broken 

open; face flat on the ground with a mound 

of black and brown ants covering its bare, unfeathered 

body; pushed out of its nest and left for dead is how I found

that tiny baby bird this morning. 

I stopped and thought about the mom in the rain-gutter 

nest overhead who couldn’t just say welcome home. 

An almost mother four times over, I know how much heavy a heart can handle, and so I wept 

for both mom and child who would never be together this side of heaven again.

And then I paused to thank God

that my mother is no Mama Bird. 

Hers are words of gentle nudges, loving chats, and friendly wisdom. 

Hers are flight lessons lined with get ‘em next times and remember 

whens and visit again soons. 

Hers is a nest I can fly home to any time of day or night. 

Even though her sky-blue stucco walls for so long felt so much like chicken 

wire that I flew the coop so soon,

Even though the silent, bleeding, naked Jesus on the wooden cross hanging 

on the inside of one of those blue walls felt like the reason I had to run 

away to cover my sins, even though it took me a season or several to see 

how safe I was no matter who I would become inside those walls, 

even though I left,

there was always still the triangle safe space on the couch formed by my mother’s legs 

as she slept so still that the side of her face would wear the sofa lines like makeup 

all of tomorrow morning — that triangle I could curl 

into like a child at any age, 

close my eyes, 

and dream.

Even now I’ve grown and flown and built my own home, she doesn’t chirp 

me out of a perfect sleep, she lies down on the cushions 

beside me, rests her eyes, and dreams 

about angels. 

And each time I wake up and find myself tucked safely back inside my mother’s nest,

she greets me with the same smiling bright brown eyes speckled with gold like a never-ending-summer-sunflower kind of sunshine that tell me 

I am hers, 

tell me I am safe, 

tell me I am home.

She never pushed me out to deal with the dirt and the worms of the world on my own. 

And if my four ever flew back to me, I know I’d do the same. 

Maybe they didn’t know, and that’s why they never came.