I have surrounded myself with wings.
It wasn't a consciously intentional act, but wherever I look from where I sit, I see wings. Dragonflies. Eagles. Hummingbirds. Angels. Fairies. Hearts. It's a collection that has accumulated over years. Whether they're lacy and insubstantial, or muscular and heavily feathered, wings comfort me and lift my spirits. Never more so than right now.
If it were possible, I would have wings.
Not much imagination is required for me to feel my shoulder blades sprout beautiful furls of feathers attached to hollow bones that unfold into appendages that might lift me high above the ground. They carry me beyond myself, and defy the weight of gravity. When I walk on a particularly windy day, the air dancing on my face and pushing against my body allows me to feel the lift, even though my feet remained firmly on the ground.
Wings would allow my body to soar as my heart often does.
Maybe to join one of the myriad V's of geese that fill the air here this time of year. Maybe to float high currents of air with the eagle who has returned to the river in the last few days. Maybe to migrate to warmer climes to wait out the cold and dark of this season in a place of light and abundance.
With wings I could rise above this unthinkable new reality and my sadness.
I could look down and see a much larger world than the one my human, grounded, eyes can perceive. One that might offer hope. The view from beneath the buoyancy of extended wings might allow beauty to shine more brightly against the shadows. I'm not trying or wanting to escape this grief. I know better than that. But I am seeking relief, air, lightness, from which to bear it. I search for the particular and unique beauty that comes only in the days of mourning, to hearts that are broken and tender and raw.
The whispers of wings deliver truth to a listening ear.
It's the small still voice. The one that encourages love and kindness. The one that is the opposite of shame and fear. Sometimes the whisper is so low it sounds like silence. It offers a space in which to simply be with it all: the sadness, the beauty, the joy, the hope, the ugliness, the shock, the uncertainty.
Things with wings are messengers of the highest order. I wrap myself in the protection of their strength and breathe in their fragile beauty. I fill my eyes with the unlikeliness of their form and function. Their existence, bird and dragonfly, make angels seem probable. Their existence and my ability to know them make now seem less hopeless, and tomorrow as open as the wide sky that those beings paint with their wings.
