“A feeling best described as sorrow that has no clear cause.”
We thought by giving him a name, it couldn’t break me so badly, but the agony still extinguishes the illumination within my irises, within my pupils, within my soul. There is a darkness deeper than I care to admit, but I cannot hide from forever. (My fire has not ignited in days, yet I cannot hide in bed and relinquish myself to the shadows completely.)
I swore to myself I would not drown in thoughts such as these, but sometimes, the devastations are greater than I can control.
It sometimes feels as though I am caught in a riptide, the ocean current pulling me away from everyone who loves me until all they are is a speck of sand, a memory.
(My honesty is raw, my words are plain. I usually hide behind an ornate metaphor crafted carefully and I tread with caution – not to overstep the boundary lines.)
I have picked up the pen several times, but the ink well is dry and my thoughts crystallize like honey thickening as it cools. Nothing makes sense when the demons take the reins & I try to swallow the bile down.
I try to offer a courageous smile, but I feel weak and collapsing is the only option I have sometimes.
Don’t judge me for the anguish I carry. Each one is a sparrow beating its wings inside my chest, desperate to be released but finding a home buried deep in my rib cage alongside that dimly burning crystal that is a barely beating heart.
(I cannot swallow for all the feathers that have climbed from my chest to my throat, from my throat to the wet insides of my mouth.)
So, instead, with this inexplicable sadness, I lie here, my heart – my sparrows – knocking against my chest (an unspoken tragedy bearing down on me).
You dress hurriedly, button your shirt hurriedly, and you run.
You run without thinking. You run home. You run past your doorman. You run into your apartment. You run into your girlfriend’s embrace. You run into the smell of her shampoo. You run into her open arms.
And you cry.
The wings are gone.
But in their place, you feel a small pair of wings flapping on your neck. You slap the back of your neck as though bitten by a mosquito. Shiloh looks at you, surprised. You have no answers for her, but you loosen your hair from its ponytail to hide the feathers.
You discover quickly you’re molting. You’re losing feathers, and laughing lightly, Shiloh scoops up some black feathers that trail behind you wherever you go. “Did you sleep with a dark angel?” she teases.
You don’t reply. Maybe they’ll just fall out on their own. But still, you feel the wings beat against the back of your neck. You hope beyond hope she doesn’t notice them. The dark wings should blend in with your hair.
But still the question remains – why? Why have they appeared?
You wonder what is happening to you.
Micah said he had answers.
You have to find him again.
You need to know what’s going on.
But first, you must go to your mother.
As you rush to the hospital with Shiloh, she tells you more of the details. Normally, lyrical, Shiloh is short with her words. “They thought it anxiety,” she explains, “she couldn’t slow her heart. Your mom isn’t the anxious type. She still can’t get it to slow.”
“A heart attack?” you wonder.
“They don’t know.”
“You seem distracted,” Shiloh confronts you in a way that is unlike her, “is it the dark angel?”
“Something like that,” you admit.
***
A few hours later, as you are walking out of the hospital room and toward an intern, you feel a strange sprouting sensation at your ankle. You yank up your pant leg and see a handful of ivory feathers clustered into a thick wing fluttering in the cool, sterile breeze. Luckily, Shiloh is glancing at her phone, and the only other person around is a beautiful intern pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair.
She smiles at you, her grin radiant, and blushing, you pull your pant leg down. Hopefully, she didn’t see anything. But the damage is done – you feel the swift quivering of the wings on your skin.
At first, you think it’s something fleeting and embarrassing – something akin to an erection. But when Shiloh and you make love that evening, you notice the wings fade. They don’t return that evening.
Or the next morning when you awaken to make her waffles for breakfast.
However, you do notice something odd, when you walk into the hospital to visit your mother, a new set of wings have grown on your eyelashes. Luckily, they’re black and curl up near the corners of your eyes, so they blend in with your eyelashes, but you feel their every movement.
And they appear only when you’re talking to your mother’s cardiologist.
She’s sweet, but unassuming. She wears a white lab coat and plain scrubs, and an engagement ring. But when she smiles, you think she seems nice. And you wonder what it’d be like to be her wife.
That’s when you know the wings aren’t a strange, sexual thing.
But when a new pair appears on your pinkie just like the first time, you grow curious. The same colors too – the lovely turquoise and brown.
Micah reappears as well.
You have so many questions for him, but he does not speak. He merely walks with you. He follows you to a coffeehouse. One you have walked to several times.
Photo via Vintage Lenses
But this time, when you see Jacqueline, the barista, your heart begins to palpitate, your hands grow sweaty, and your lips feel dry. You have so much you wish to say to her, but you have lost the nerve.
You stand outside the coffee shop, heart in your throat. That is before you see your reflection in the window. That is before you see the six foot tall pair of wings the color of milk attached to your shoulder blades, glimmering and shimmering like stars.
You gasp.
“It’s never been about lust,” Micah whispers, “your seraphic metamorphosis. It’s been about love.”
end.
Isabelle Palerma
This short story is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.
I remember a photo I saw of a two-hundred-year-old cherry blossom tree. I imagine the events it must have borne witness to: births, deaths, tsunamis, the rise and fall of empires, but still its branches spread with pink and red blooms. I wake up some mornings, an elegy for self on my cracked lips, gazing upon my scars and wondering why I’m still here. But to some, I’m still blooming and they don’t see the fractures I think define me. Perhaps I still have some life in me.
If a tree can withstand two-hundred years of storm and sun, I, too, can live and love a little longer.
You take a deep breath, not sure whether to believe this man named Micah, but what choice do you have? You cannot stay locked in his bathroom with a pair of nail clippers forever.
As you trudge out of the bathroom, he offers you a weak smile – not the generous grin from before. “You’re not a mutant,” he says, as if that’s going to make you feel any better.
“Gee, thanks,” you mutter.
He shrugs. “I’m trying here.”
That’s when it hits you with all of the strength of a bullet train. Yes, you might have slept with Micah last night, but you’re in a relationship.
Your girlfriend won’t be mad. She probably is sleeping with someone else too, but she will be jealous you slept on silk sheets and the guy you slept with has a bidet, which probably cost more than your rent and monthly utility bill.
Anyway. You should probably hurry back to Shiloh, but right now, you have more questions than answers, and he’s out of bed and making eggs that smell to die for.
Finally, you say, “What do you mean you know all about the feathers on my finger?”
He turns to you, flipping the omelet. “I mean,” he says in a pedantic tone, “I know what they are. Why they showed up.”
You want to find out more. Your mouth is watering. You’re hungry. You’re not sure if you’re hungry for details or for the cheddar-and-ham omelet he is preparing like a three-star Michelin star chef. But before he can elaborate, your phone begins to blare your familiar melody, “A Seraphic Metamorphosis”, by your favorite band, Compensated Endeavor. He grins and grabs you by the waist, grinding against you.
Photo via Luis Zheji
You smile, the tiny wings on your pinkie fluttering. Sheepishly, you jam your hand against the skin of your hip, wishing you were dressed. “It’s my ring tone,” you mumble, “I better answer that.”
Shiloh’s voice floods your ear, breathless and frightened and small, “Hey,” she says, “it’s your mom. Something with her heart.”
You listen to her breathing and can hear your own heart whooshing in your ear. This is not good. You look down at your hand – the flittering feathers have vanished.
Like they were never there at all.
… to be continued.
Isabelle Palerma
This short story is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.
You talk of your soul ossifying – the soft parts hardening, but I’m preoccupied with pulling out the hems of reality, ripping out the stitching.
I refuse to yield.
To be soft for too many years means to decay, to become moss underfoot & I refuse to become trampled.
They told me that the way you identify lace is by its holes, and I know now, I never want to be recognized by what I lack.
Instead, I hunt for the parts of myself that used to be consumed by the patriarchy and men with hunger for eyes. (The pieces of myself that were consumed because I swallowed my teeth to make myself more digestible.)
But I don’t need a flashlight or a search party — I can be discovered quite easily.
I’m not the girl who I thought I was. I’m the woman who refuses to surrender. I forget my fight sometimes (like the candle who neglected her flame), but I am prepared for war.
I am no longer paraffin wax that pours down smoothly- only to harden on your lungs. I’m not the gentle pieces you stepped upon – the dandelion you crushed & never asked forgiveness of.
Isabelle Palerma 