Half a Pair of Wings

On darker days I wish
I’d never learned better:
where once I longed
for lighter skies,

I look now to the earth
for soothing, and she does
little to comfort; though craving
escape, instead

I pen myself
into captivity
knowing that one good flight
will free me:

one lonely peek
at the heights
I once haunted,
one sole jaunt

through unseeable clouds
on a bright day’s
unseasonable depression—
now be reasonable,

remind me
why not / why
I'm like this—
in dark weather, caught

under pressure’s
systemic repression
and my obsession
with the words on the very walls

that keep me
from being heard—
just one is all,
one lift over the edge,

regardless how tall;
I need to be home,
and home is high,
where such precipitous falls

await—won't you
free me
finally
from this dream

of you
returning
like the seasons
of my childhood,

before the first snows
waited till year's end,
and I didn't know
how to write

myself into these corners
of imagined talent,
so tunneled
into perfection

that no pencil
may grace the heavens
I long to trace;
not least as I am,

so mortal
and soberly earthbound,
in yearning to alight

on the feathers I've shelved,
fearing like Daedalus
the perils of height—

but so too was Icarus
warned of the ocean:
soar too low
and bear the curse

of the sea;
you know by now
my dread of water,
my Piscean fate—

so where’s one to fly?
I think of panic attacks
like fables,

minding their lessons
when mindful and able—
but despair doesn’t listen
to the wisdom of ages;

no matter how many pages
I burn writing in wait
for healing, my lead
is nothing but weight;

how, then, is one not to crave?
even knowing as I do
the full cost of hubris,
I keep enough saved

for half a pair of wings.
Just one:
not enough
to touch the sun,

but enough, at least,
to feel it.