I can only fall in love with wings
flashing between the pews of a funeral,
divorced from keepers,
testing a scab against The Ward’s lightbulbs,
call shy at a shotgun wedding,
unwelcome awe in the rafters,
I volunteer to handle them,
throbbing with fear tapping the glass casing,
what if there is not even a single poetried music in still air,
or rest from the fear of unrelenting madness?
There is wonder in preening missing feathers,
where tattoos glisten mistakes like sweater sleaves did
in bed within them,
no threat, my sweet, ghostly company
I learned the peripheral shadow kept in careful vision
pet like an animal, if I was one
my mind trained on the chestpin released,
wasting no time to leave with the breath of fear
underwing like the lamentations of the mama
preferring caged songs to grieving bodies
Can I become a thing that flies?
remove the liminal body taught to me
by survivors of survivors of survivors?
Is it resilience that comes with a map of the heart?
Or the potential memory of violence that genders us?
yet still I am more like the wind I was before I knew them well.
