Unscheduled Flight

A black fly in midwinter has burgled the warm air of the kitchen. It struggles for height, a brittle-winged air-bender reaching for plateaus, higher footstools, grasping for spice shelves or the slope of a slick cooker hood. The splutter of an over-revved engine, the bolted clicking of insectivore plates. Up it lifts again turning like a wounded helicopter only to crash-land on a dish of cooling porridge. Mired, it scoops gravity out from a clogged exoskeleton staggers to a porcelain edge. Heavy airfoils battle a steam laden air. Its weight now cannot be sustained. It falls to the hard kitchen floor spins disorientated on its back. A dervish dance. Sibilant thunder-claps of a now dismantled buzzing. Will it try again to lift its wreckage? Between the paused silence of a ticking wall-clock a burnt-out fuselage trembles. Nothing disembarks.