I soar and drift.
The ocean swells beneath me.
I can see it all.
I can see the darkest blues
and the brightest glimmers
throughout the entire sea. I can
see the peasants
lying in the alleyways
and I can see the kings,
hiding in their castles made of stone,
leaning
back against their thrones.

I can see the man,
returning home from a hard day of work
trailing behind his weary ox.
Below him the shepherd
tends to the sheep,
so close to the rocky shore.
Those mindless sheep.

In the water,
the brilliant, ever-expanding blue,
a ship sails from the coast. An epic,
not unlike mine,
is being written for these men.
And just as well,
for the men in the cages, in the dungeons.
They cry home,
and yearn for the light outside,
the sound of the waves
drowns their ears.

I stare at the ground
and I think of my Father, who will be joining me soon
and we will fly


up, into the heavens.
The clouds will be at our feet
and we will run through them,
and we will become free.

And then I hear a drip.
Through the wind
and the cracking of the waves below
and the burning of the fire within the sun above,
I hear a drip.
I hear more
drips. I go insane
because I can’t stop hearing drips.
They can’t be from the ground.
I’m too far up.
I’ll go higher.
I’ll go so high
that all I’ll be able to hear
is the sound of the fires
burning on top of the sun’s surface.

Below me, I hear a man.
My Father. I hear him. Shouting my name.
He sounds so distressed,
so concerned.
But I look down, ready to reassure him.
And I see my wings. My beautiful wings.
The wax which was once caked between my feathers
has melted.
It has dripped to the water.
And soon I am dripping from the sky.

I cut through the air.
I barley have time


to tell my Father
how afraid I am.
I barely have time
before I sink into the water.
The darkest blues
crawl around me.
The brightest glimmers
become distant memories.