This was written for the IndieWeb Carnival September 2025, which was hosted by Fractal Kitty.

I've never done a indie web carnival before, despite loving the idea, so I the moment I got this final iteration of my site off the ground I ran to the page to see what was being hosted this month. The theme "Second Person Birds" seemed rather opaque and abstruse to me (who knows, maybe the meaning was obvious to well-established and experienced indie-webbers), so instead of preparing a piece immediately, I decided to wait to see what others wrote, to see if I could judge the 'vibe' of the submissions.

Two weeks into September, I checked back to the carnival page and found this lovely piece by Marisabel. Its opening paragraphs felt like they were written for me, as they described exactly my predicament (all the way to researching One Person Birds). In the end, they decide:

I will indulge Fractal Kitty and invent my own meaning.

This was the catalyst for this piece, the permission I unconsciously needed to write something for this carnival. Thanks, Marisabel.

Second person writing, in my mind, is closely tied with empathy, or the ability to put oneself in another's shoes. Perhaps that's why all the writing I've ever read in second person has been exclusively human-to-human. While you definitely can have empathy for an animal, I think there's a certain amount of anthropomorphism happening - empathy between humans is simpler, because fundamentally you 'understand' the human experience.

I have yet to read a piece where the 'you' represents a rock, a tree, or a bird. I've read first-person writing from those viewpoints, and that isn't uncommon at all (I've even written some). But second person is a special case: you can suspend your disbelief and see the world through the metaphorical eyes of almost anything, but to actually imagine yourself as a bird, or a rock, or a tree, is too alien for it to be commonly written.

There is so much about the experience of being a bird that we will never know. Is flight a conscious effort, or more like walking, something the body does naturally? How much does birdsong actually communicate between individuals, or even cross-species? Indeed, this entire piece I've been anthropomorphising birds by even assuming they have an equivalent inner experience.

As such, I don't think I can have an experience of being a 'second person bird'. I am not a bird, and I don't have the mental flexibility nor the imagination to become one for a few paragraphs.

But birds themselves do not need such an imagination.

Some species of birds display signs of mourning when a flock-mate dies: lingering by their deceased partners, eating less, or unusual silence following a death - all gestures which we interpret as grief.

Is this empathy in birds? If they have an understanding of grief, can they understand less strong emotions in other birds? What about another bird of a different species?

Do birds watch and wonder about us too? Can they recognise pain, joy, death in humans as we can in them?

Do birds think about 'second person humans'?

Comments? For now, please flick me an email at elliottjosephprice@gmail.com while I set up something better.