death and life of a bird. my heart in my head.

I rode my bike fast, my heart in my head, the sun on my face and the wind at my back. I saw a bird fall from the sky dead as she twirled down to the right of me, thumping down into the grass. I stopped my bike and looked up, seeing nothing but clouds and hot blue sky. I crouched down and looked at the bird seeing how her feet were stretched back as though to cut through summer air, her wings cockeyed at different angles as though she had just paused, mid-flight to give herself over to death. Her body was still plump and whole...a mystery to me. How did this happen? Where did she come from? Did her body just give up? Her life already lived? I just crouched there for a while, watching her wings fluttering in the breeze as her body stiffened. So many thoughts ran through my head. Slippery ones that my mind could not hold onto for my heart was too big as it occupied all the space intended for logic. Slowly I stood, my legs creaking as I remembered that I too was moving closer to death. I felt dizzy for a moment as my eyes readjusted to the open space surrounding me. the hot asphalt shimmering in the sun, the cool green grass in a long strip beside me, my bike turned over onto the curb, its metal frame glinting in the bright light. I walked over to it uncertainly, feeling the weight of an unnamed emotion pushing my body down, slowing me up. I picked up my foreign seeming bike and felt its familiar weight in my hands as I got on, my feet finding the pedals out of memory, my body knowing the way as I rode away with my heart still firmly in my head. As I began to pick up speed, I looked down at the road below and saw this: a cracked open blue eggshell its broken imperfection fragile in the man-made street, formerly the home of a baby bird, its feathers probably now ruffling in the breeze of its newly found flight as my logical human mind reasserted itself and my heart found its way back to my chest. I now pumped the pedals faster, the sun on my face and the wind at my back, the looming truth of death now visible on the horizon.