A Fly Taught Me to Fly

It came like a whisper on wings too dirty for angels, a fly with no gospel— just bloodlust and fire. I don’t remember the bite— only the stories they told me— the brain-boil, the silence of a body already leaving, the baby too lethargic to be called alive, and the ice-water baths. Above the crib, they hovered— not angels, not flies, but entities without names, bodiless heads darkling the air and gazing at me through fever, muscle and bone like they were trying to decide if I’d stay. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. Then light fractured like crystal— a thousand shards of purple fire and malachite rain and respiring walls. My hands were wings, or roots, or stars. Sound became color, and color became taste— I drank something blue and forgot my name. I didn’t return unchanged. I still taste color in silence, but boundaries are smudged between thought and sky, betwixt dream and doorframe, and now I write letters from the borderlands because a fly taught me to fly, and every shadow since has hidden wings.