Murmuration (for the wrong birds)

I came in wrong:
wrong colour,
wrong song,
wrong latitude entirely.

The sky here
was not expecting me.

I could tell
by the silence.

I stayed anyway.

And one morning
I heard my own cry
come back to me
from somewhere in the canopy
and thought:

Oh.

Oh, there you are.

Not the flock I dreamed.
Not the sky I grieved.

Just this:
a city that didn't invite me,
that learnt to live with me,
and you,
bright
and improbable
and loud
and here,
which turns out to be enough.

Together
we made the trees ours,
the dusk ours,
the whole
unreasonable
sky
ours.

I am extremely loud about it now.

That's what belonging does.

It makes you
unashamed
of the sound
you make.