My First [Mid-life] Heartbreak: I Call Her Song Bird 🎶🐦‍🔥

It was March 14th, 2025. She set up a last-minute date with me after I mentioned I’d be leaving soon for a weeklong vacation in Cancún. That same evening, my cousins arrived in town, and I took them out for dinner, offering suggestions for things to do while they visited. After saying my goodbyes, I headed home to finish packing.

Something in me insisted I check my work email before the trip. Sure enough, a task needed urgent attention, and by the time I resolved it, I was two hours late to her casita. Punctuality has never been my strong suit, and I knew it. Wanting to soften the sting of my lateness, I arrived with Boba tea in hand—her favorite.

Once inside, we settled into practicing our duo setlist. Music has always been a language between us, and that night it lifted the mood instantly. We sang together, laughed through mistakes, and eventually moved into karaoke just for fun. While she finished a song in her bedroom, I sat nearby and rubbed lotion into her legs and feet. Her voice—smooth, seductive, and effortlessly beautiful—carried through the room, filling me with a kind of joy I had never known before. It was the first time I experienced the exhilarating combination of musical passion and undeniable physical desire.

When she finished singing, we kissed on the couch. Soon after, she invited me into her bedroom. My heart raced as though I were a teenager with his first love. That night was our first time being truly intimate together, and it is etched into my memory with a clarity that still makes me smile.

It felt as though the world had slowed into just the two of us. Moonlight spilled through the window, wrapping her in a soft, inviting glow. When our eyes met, everything else fell away. There was a pause—not hesitation, but reverence. We both seemed to recognize that we were stepping into something sacred.

Her touch was gentle yet certain, like she had always known me. Every kiss deepened with tenderness and hunger until words no longer fit between us. Our rhythm was unhurried, natural, as if we were both discovering and remembering each other all at once. What struck me most wasn’t just the passion but the intimacy: her unguarded stare in the moonlight, her quiet trust, her affection given freely. In that moment, I didn’t simply make love to her—I gave her my heart, and she opened hers to me in return.

We finally went to asleep around 3:30 in the morning, only for me to wake up a couple of hours later.  I boarded my flight running on no sleep, but my face was lit with a joy I couldn’t hide.

At the airport, I met up with my longtime friend Laura, who had volunteered to be my travel companion in Cancún. I couldn’t help telling her about this new relationship; I was overflowing with it. When we had a layover in Denver, I wandered into a bookstore and bought a journal, deciding to document this new phase of my life—especially my dates with my new lover.

Laura teased me the moment I showed her the journal. “You’re smiling like a teenage boy,” she laughed. “Dear Diary, I love her so much!” Her ribbing didn’t bother me; she’s known me for more than a decade and has always been able to see through to the truth.

Throughout our trip, she gave me thoughtful advice as I talked about her again and again. By then, I had started calling her “Song Bird,” a name born from the way her voice and presence moved me.

While in Cancún, I FaceTimed with her one evening. Our call lasted four hours but felt like thirty minutes. She was, as always, refreshingly honest—sometimes about things that were difficult to hear. She spoke about her date the night before with someone new, a construction worker in his twenties. The details stung, stirring jealousy in me, though I didn’t hide it. But her openness reminded me of why I admired her. She never spoke with malice. In fact, whenever she thought her words might hurt, she prefaced them and asked for my consent to share. That level of care meant more to me than the sting of the details themselves.

Through her stories, I came to understand her better—her love of novelty, her joy in meeting new people, and how these experiences made her feel like her best self. She glowed when she spoke of it, and I realized that this joy was part of what drew me so strongly to her.

For me, adjusting to her ENM lifestyle was not simple. A lifetime of monogamous expectations doesn’t shift overnight. Jealousy and uncertainty were real, but so was the growth that came from facing them. Loving her meant learning more about myself, about attachment, and about what it truly means to connect with someone.

Later, I wrote in my journal:

“[She] appears as an innocent, beautiful Song Bird gaining the affection and admiration of Bird Enthusiasts of all types, but she is cunning and possesses an insatiable appetite; though her admirers observe intently, they know not that they are her prey… I told her that she is like a brilliant flame: inviting, warm, inspirational, beautiful and intoxicating but get too close and a person can get burned…. All wounds heal with time, except the Song Bird’s blaze.”

That image stayed with me. It inspired a song I wrote soon after, one of many I would go on to write about her. Creating music for her has been a surprising gift—one she awakened in me without even knowing it. For that, I will always be grateful.

Song Bird 🐦‍🔥

Verse 1:

Rushing for cover from droplets of rain

The chilly winds forced us to move in haste

Pockets of fog covered your feet

We hurried across Fremont street

Got back to the car, found a spot to park

Walked upstairs and went to a piano bar

You walked to the mic, you asked to sing

Your pretty voice drew crowds in the scene

Verse 2:

We sat down and ate at the old cafe

Talked of bad love and the wisdom gained

spoke of dreams, goals and what the future holds 

And with every word, you painted your soul

And of all my fortune and all my fame

Nothing compares to the song bird’s flame

Though I find myself too close to the blaze

Who hasn’t loved without feeling some pain

Chorus:

Your sweet harmony pulls me in a trance

You got me losing time in this lovers dance 

I’m falling in love with the song bird’s flame

I’ve had many lovers but none like you babe

Bridge:

Song Bird stay

Fall with me

Let’s chase this lovely dream

Song bird please

Fly with me

Let me hear your melody

Verse 3:

Given all my fortune, all my fame, Still

Nothing compares to the song bird’s flame

Though I’ve danced too close to the blaze

I’ll suffer the heat if that’s the price to pay

Better to love and lose it all

Than to never have heard the song bird’s call