The delicate beast within my breast.

Something is alive in me. The fluttering in my heart is not its own beat, it’s the desperate wings of a baby bird, soft and yellow like a duckling, trapped in my atria. It pecks at my heart constantly, its clawing and thrashing a maddening irritation. All the time, I’m wishing it would rest. All the time, I’m searching for how to give it ease, how to give myself ease from it.

Washing dishes, seeing friends, driving — I live my life impatiently, wasting time that should be spent liberating this nascent creature from the prison of my bone and muscle. I want to free us both from this torment.

I imagine clawing back at it. Digging my nails through my flesh until my fingertips find purchase to rip my chest open. Need I tear myself asunder to let it fly?

I scrounge around for what might get it out of me painlessly, some magic potion or perfect key that can unlock whatever has caged it. I try babbling to friends, scribbling on scraps of paper, raging into the digital void. Nothing works. All the while it grows more desperate, as do I.

At times it seems to pry through my heart and be clawing its away up my throat. Then it’s a grotesque version of itself, half-formed and featherless, made of translucent, raw skin through which I can see its pulsing veins. It grips my windpipe and stretches its scrawny neck. The…