When I was a child, I did a handstand.

While my hair danced with the grass as my body swayed, I realized that in that moment the world was on top of me. And as the blood rushed to my head, I pretended that my hands were the only force holding the world in space.

A canary in a small cage is placed in a mining cave to be the litmus to the safety of the air for humans to breath. This tiny bird is more sensitive to any poison than we are, so its death can predict our own.

My arms became weak and began to shake from the weight of the earth and all its inhabitants. I lowered my head to the ground and used the strength of my neck to take some of the burden from my arms.

The bright yellow of the bird is muddled by the dark of the cave. It sings only to hear its song mocked back to it from the angles of the rock. Is it intelligent enough to know that the song it hears is its own?

My feet tingle with the loss of blood but I continue working them to keep my balance, but the pooling of the blood in my head begins to muddy my thoughts. All of a sudden, I fell the immense pressure of my task and I don’t want it anymore.

A gas pools around the bird but it cannot know. There is no smell or taste, just a sensation of slowed thought followed by the panic of the realization that something is wrong.

My back strains from the exertion so I lower my knees to my elbows. I don’t want to give up, but I don’t want to let everyone down, but I am not strong enough to do it alone. Why are the burdens of the world so heavy?

The tiny thing wobbles on its perch and flutters its tiny wings to keep from falling down. The effort only makes the task more difficult because its perch is moving. It cannot calculate fast enough the moves it needs to make to prevent a fall.

My body starts to shake. I cannot compensate fast enough, so I over compensate. The effort makes me dizzy and my head swims.

A torch on the wall flares from the noxious gas. Pairs of eyes swivel to the bright light, then to the tiny cage where a tiny yellow canary falls to the floor.

The force is too much. The exertion past my will. My back muscles strain to keep me vertical, but fail and I tumble to the ground.

On its back the canary pants in the toxic gas. Its pupils dilated to the max. Its enclosure is grabbed and jostled about towards sun light. Or is it the last great white light?

Woozy, I look at my hands stained with grass and the earth under my nails. I try to wipe the stain away, but it only stains more of me. I pull a twig from my hair and work at the earth lodged under my nails.

It is the sun. It is they sky smeared with clouds. The bird breathes in the live giving air and regains its composure as the poison is expelled. It hears the song of another, but that little yellow canary cannot answer back.

The stains will never go away once they are attained. The dirt can never be dislodged from the crevices it has found. There is no water pure enough to wash it away.

The poison stole the canary’s song forever. The lively chittering it once knew is all a facade after one faces death.

Anytime a raise my hands above my head, and I see the earth under my nails I am reminded of how the weight of the world is on top of me; how all the pain and suffering of the world flowed into my body like a noxious gas into a canary.

I once did a handstand and failed.

Next time instead of the world changing me, I will change the world. The canary will sing!