When I was still an angel,
my brother sat me by the fireplace
and grabbed my wings in his meaty hands.
The bones in the wings fractured with his pull
and jutted through my skin,
but that wasn't enough for him.
He held me down as he
plucked out all of my feathers
one by one,
ignoring me as I screamed.
He let me go when my wings were finally bare,
two bloody appendages that lay limp on my body
and just like that,
I couldn't fly anymore.
I looked up to the skies and cried,
begging for my wings to grow back
to what they were before
but the skies never answered
and so I watched all the other angels soar
as I remained trapped on the ground.
I didn't even look to my brother,
because he would never give them back to me
even if he could.
He never even bothered to look at me again,
except when he wanted to break my wings a little bit more.
So for years,
I hid my broken wings under baggy t-shirts,
under one night stands,
under "cat scratches".
I never got my wings back;
one day, their remains just fell off my body
and I didn't even bother picking them up,
just covered the bloody indents they left my back with Band-Aids
and walked on pretending
I was still whole without them.