11-14-2021, 10:46 PM
Just for her.
If she asked you, you think you could be that, just for her. You have never been just for anyone, with all your siblings, even your parents have one another.
She grins and you think is this the world? Is this the world and everyone else in it? The red pools in her eyes and you watch with something like awe (the same way you watched an ant lift a blade of grass for the first time, or when you say the northern lights.) “Are you going to cry?” You ask because you have only known your own tears when you scrapped your knee on a rough patch of ice. You ask because you wonder if this is how the rest of the world cries.
But she is grinning and you think you can’t be sad and smile at the same time. Your life is so simple—smiles mean happiness—tears mean sorrow. You have not yet learned the grace of weeping behind a happy face.
“Yes, here,” you nod encouragingly. You have little experience in conversation, you think this is normal. Your ignorance will kill you. You scrunch that young face and stare towards the heaven thinking of your very best answer. “I think it’s like my forest,” you say because you do not know that other forests exist outside of your own in the North.
And when that blood falls down her face and gathers, you watch with wide green eyes. “Oh, you are crying,” you say and shift your weight and hug your wings tighter to your small frame. “Your tears are red,” like blood you should say, but instead— “like the cardinal I found once.” You think she is lucky and you feel something tickle the back of your mind, an emotion you cannot quite place. (You will learn this emotion to be jealousy, when you see the girl you like talking to a boy that isn’t you.) “Mine are clear—like the lake,” you say. “How can I make mine red like yours?”
never gave a single thought to where it might lead
image by Gary Bendig
@miseria