It wasn’t his fault. Not his, nor his father’s,
but no one asked the feathers
torn by root and broken calamus,
lifted from their soft repose,
if they would take part in the scheme of man
and monster. Woven and waxed
in their nest of branches, bent into parody
of prior form, reminiscent enough
to stir some lingering trace
of lives once lived. Enough
to rouse them from crafted quiescence
to rustle with whispers,
sharing susurrus stories
as they once shared sky, and say—
Remember.
When he takes his leave of earth
bearing the shape of miracles on his back,
these captured pinions steal his senses,
rob his tongue of the promise
he made his father and fill him instead
with songs of air and grace,
a lofty seduction even as they yearn—
yearn for their own freedom,
living again with this taste of air
as he bears them higher and higher
and higher. Their murmurations spill
over wood and thread, inviting them all
to wake – and in the space
of that single moment—
Remember.
And the wood remembers, says:
let us become trees again, our roots
anchored in the skin of the world.
And the string remembers, says:
let us become flax again, blossoming
beneath an endless sky.
And the feathers of his wings say:
we can be birds again, we can remember
what it is to be holy,
to be whole and flighted, to be free to carry
our own weight, unburdened
by mistakes made by other hands.
And he whose life cannot be given back
to his father, they instead bear gently
with all the tenderness of broken things,
as they descend to water and salt,
to the start of all beginnings,
to the waiting cradle of the sea.
Jessica is a Rhysling Award winning author of speculative poetry and short fiction. Born in Korea, they currently live in New England where they balance their aversion to cold with the inability to live anywhere without snow. Previous works have appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Fireside Fiction, khōréō, Daily Science Fiction and elsewhere. You can find them online at semiwellversed.wordpress.com or on Twitter @wordsbycho
