I Read to a Parrot

Seeing the parrot in distress,
I began to read aloud, turning the pages slowly so he could catch my every movement.
He eyed my bookmark warily.
I bent myself into a half slouch, half standing position so he could read what I was reading to him, if he could read.
He cocked his scruffy grey head to one side,
listening, as the words tumbled out of my mouth.
A chain to his right claw was there to make sure he was prisoner.
He strained that chain so he could hear better, or maybe aim better so he could take a bite out of my thumb.
He might have been once a handsome bird,
but pressure of being isolated took out what made him sure of what he was.
If a parrot can go crazy and lose defined intelligence,
I guess humans too can walk into their own mind-trap.
If our reality is based on structures of experience and belief,
I come to the conclusion that no life is 100% objectively real, because no one is me.

Based on my belief that I am the reality.

If there was a second life

If there was a second life parallel to this one of ours

in the next millionth of a second lives another me, and another you.

I wonder too sometimes what that he, that she, and that what I would become if fate spun the other way.

I would never know, not in this coming existence anyway.

My wise sister tells me there are no shortcuts with time.

Every deal is fair, non-wavering and universal, an invisible force of law we are bound to.
What you buy with time, you will eventually pay back, with time.

This curious thing, we are the experiment.