Fledgling

Published in Landlocked Magazine, 2019

On the days that your obligations get heavy and gravity presses down a little harder on your shoulders, you start to wonder what it would be like to wake up one morning and feel the sharp sting of feathers beginning to poke through your pores. You would throw off smooth sheets and peel off your clothes, the scratch of fabric overwhelming against your newly sensitive skin. You would feel the twist and heat of your bones grinding down, of your feet crunching and drying and toughening, becoming leathery and small and clawed. Your face would stretch and pull and tear, but your screams would sound like birdsong, high and melodic. Those budding feathers would finally burst through your skin, and explosion of blues and grays and whites, as you shrink down amongst your bedsheets. You would stretch your arms—now wings—and instinct would teach you how to fly, out the open window and into the crisp morning, leaving behind nothing but a handful of feathers.