"Wings" by Ingrid L. Taylor
Updated: Mar 13
The child wonders why the cicada’s eyes are red when hers are blue
if the sky they fall under flushes like a welt on the skin
like a fire
like a rose
if color means the same thing
and what it’s like to live
inside a crimson song
And learns early to seek the speck on the horizon
to watch for the cloud and the darkening drop
understands to call the thing
pestilence
and never visitation
the way they husk and shell their lives
on the concrete, and the pulses
of their iridescent wings still
like a heart muscle grown weary and strained
The child wonders why some mornings she wakes as a bruised fruit
turned just past sweetness
Though she has no wings to speak of
she is certain her feet lift from the earth when she walks
she does not know that a rock and a stone can be two different things
and in time, everything is left to the flies
One day her throat will open to join the humming chorus
to thrill and float and dive and finally to rest
among the graveyard of carapace and wing
She wonders
if a song is a color that must be answered
why they sing as they die
Ingrid L. Taylor’s stories and poems have appeared in the Horror Writers Association Poetry Showcase volumes VI and VII, Zooscape, Legs of Tumbleweed, Wings of Lace: An Anthology of Literature by Nevada Women,Gaia: Shadow and Breath, vol.3, and others. When she’s not writing, she works as a veterinarian for an international nonprofit. For news about her writing and adventures with her animals, find her on Instagram @tildybear.
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