A beginner’s lessons in flight | Teen Ink

A beginner’s lessons in flight MAG

April 14, 2010
By Anonymous

Born with others
just another squirming mass
singled out and taken to the edge
and when you're dazzled and confused and ready to break down and wail

they say, you're ready now.
now you can fly.
They miss the idea that they have to fly away.
and you keep banging your head on
the ceiling
or dropping into the safety net set out there just to catch you
and while you're grateful for it
it's still a restraint.

Don't fly too high yet,
we'll hold you back
Don't fall either
but if you do, we'll catch you.

And the desire to fly as high and as fast as you can takes hold
forgetting for a moment that you are flesh
and blood
imagining a new shining being of steel
shooting for the distant far-off suns

And yet sometimes you cannot help but fall
and when you do, small children come and find you.
to honor you with their odd humble pitying little burial rites,
hiding you from adults
with their stash of tangled yo-yos and shiny pennies and yarn collected from where
it was,
snarled on trees.

until you drop away
in slowly decaying pieces
and are buried in the leaf mold under a tree
where you sink down roots
and stretch up leaves
and find the sun



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This article has 2 comments.


on Oct. 29 2010 at 9:44 am
SMWells PLATINUM, Carlisle, South Carolina
22 articles 0 photos 294 comments

Favorite Quote:
Some truths best left unspoken.

Oops! I forgott the [n] in the word only.

on Oct. 29 2010 at 9:42 am
SMWells PLATINUM, Carlisle, South Carolina
22 articles 0 photos 294 comments

Favorite Quote:
Some truths best left unspoken.

I like it.But it gave me a bit of a startel when I read [forgetting in moment] for I had  ritten those same words in poem aout somthing intirely different. Oly, they made up a line all themselvs.