On The Hawk’s Wings
Written by @painfullyaverage-1973
A year ago, the calendar learned a cruel trick—
how to hold
a first hello
and a last goodbye
inside the same square.
The day she entered the world,
tiny lungs drawing their first breath,
became the day her father
released his final one.
Not stolen by cigarettes,
not by reckless choices,
but by years spent working among inks,
solvents,
and invisible poisons
that settled quietly into his body
while he earned a living,
while he built a life,
while he helped make the daughter
who would one day carry his memory.
Now every birthday arrives
wearing two faces.
One smiles.
One weeps.
And she has learned
to embrace them both.
She remembers the sound of his voice,
the shape of his laughter,
the countless ordinary moments
that become treasures
only after someone is gone.
But before he left,
she asked something beautiful of him.
When the veil between worlds grew thin,
when his time drew near,
she made a request born of love:
Send me hawks.
Not grand miracles.
Not thunderclaps from heaven.
Just hawks.
A wingbeat.
A silhouette.
A fleeting shadow crossing the sky.
Something simple enough
for the heart to recognize.
And so they came.
Perched on fence posts.
Circling above highways.
Gliding across sunsets.
Appearing in moments
when grief grew heavy
and memory ached.
Again and again,
they arrived.
Perhaps coincidence,
some would say.
But she has never been one
to see the universe
as a machine of accidents.
Her spirit is too vast for that.
She sees the sacred
hidden in ordinary things.
She finds divinity
in birdsong,
in moonlight,
in rain on leaves,
in strangers’ kindness,
in the quiet language of stars.
She understands
that wonder is not the opposite of truth.
Sometimes,
it is another form of it.
And so when the hawk appears,
she smiles.
Not because her grief is gone.
Not because she no longer misses him.
But because love has found
a new address.
Because for one suspended moment,
the distance between Earth and eternity
feels smaller than a feather.
A hawk turns upon an invisible current.
The sun catches its wings.
And she feels him there.
Not trapped in the bird.
Not haunting the sky.
Simply present.
A father,
still keeping promises.
A daughter,
still looking up.
And somewhere beyond sight,
beyond sorrow,
beyond the limits of flesh and time,
the cosmos glows a little brighter
from the positive light she pours into it—
a woman whose faith transforms loss
into gratitude,
whose heart gathers beauty
from every corner of existence,
whose spirit sends kindness outward
like ripples across an endless sea.
The hawk passes overhead.
She pauses.
She smiles.
And for a moment,
birthday candles
and memorial candles
become the same flame—
burning with sadness,
burning with love,
burning with the certainty
that some connections
are too profound for death
to ever truly break.
- PainfullyAverage-1973