A Caged Bird

Editor's Note: Sojourners is collecting writing from men and women in the prison system. This is one of their stories.

I caged a bird once when I was a kid. I used a small box to build a trap equipped with string, a branch, and bread crumbs for bait. I crouched down in my shadowy perch and counted off the seconds as I lay in wait, imagining the thrill of victory. Before long, a small bird soared into view, landed near the hidden dungeon, and ventured inside. Unable to contain my excitement, I yanked the string and the box slammed shut.

I was so elated to see that the trap actually worked. I sprang towards the prize with little consideration for anything but my own sense of accomplishment. I outsmarted the opposition and conquered it. I won.

Initially, the commotion from within the box confirmed that the prey was inside. Then everything went silent. I contemplated my next move. Where to keep the bird? What to feed it? It struck me that most importantly, the bird needed air. I held the box with both hands and lifted it just slightly enough for a crack of sunlight to creep through. Nothing happened. I started to doubt if I’d even captured the formidable adversary or if its innate elusiveness had something to do with magic. The curiosity was killing me.

I eased the box higher, just enough to peep inside. That’s when the bird saw its chance and made a break for it. It shimmied out the slit, hopped several times to build momentum, then took flight. I stood there motionless, disappointed as I watched my victim escape. I felt duped as though the bird was at fault for defying me and not conforming to an outcome I had set. It stole that feeling of invincibility from me and it just didn’t seem fair. I was the greater force at work. My happiness was the only thing relevant.

Today, I was caged by a bird as it sat perched atop the windowsill outside my cell here on death row. At first, I tried paying it no mind. But its looming presence was impossible to ignore and I tried shooing it away. Unfazed by my frivolous antics, the bird refused to budge. Instead, peering at me here in the box with seemingly no regard for the victim trapped within. Its eyes were stoic and held no empathy or remorse for the horrible conditions I suffered. I suddenly remembered a time when the rules were reversed.

The day when I was a kid, I watched that bird escape and fly away, not once did I consider what the ordeal it must’ve been like for it. How afraid it must’ve been being swallowed up in the darkness. The loneliness it must’ve felt. Confusion. The hurt and anger of being violated and victimized. And what of the consequences had it never returned to the nest. Would its family miss it? Would there be songs to mourn its absence? Were there young that depended on its safe return for survival?

I have known what it’s like to be the bird outside my window but until now, not the one that I trapped in the box. Today I am that bird, trapped beyond the cruel dark thresholds of death row. Except here, there are no cracks to breach, no slits from which to escape, and the only air to breathe holds the aroma of death.

Sometimes I think it’s karma. The encounter with the bird was certainly not the only stain on my moral canvas. I would go on to do many things I regret. Other times I think maybe it was a test. That the bird was sent to metaphorically provide an escape from a gateway of terrible decisions and a path from which there was no return. Maybe the bird was never really trapped at all. Maybe it was me all along. If so, then here I wait, afraid, lonely, and confused; feeling violated and victimized, and desperately hoping for the day when a crack of sunlight will creep through.