Little Wings by Stephanie Parent

I scrawled my love on a piece of paper
and grew angry when a flame devoured it
and left ash

I typed my hopes on a computer keyboard
and panicked when a virus darted and danced in lines of code
like a trickster god across the screen

I carved my dreams in a great old oak tree
and when the thunder bellowed and the lightning
cleaved my dreams in two, my heart went with them

so I wrote my secrets on my skin
but when the cells divided, peeled and shed
my secrets with them,

I grew despondent,
spoke my losses to the wind,
thought it would carry them far from me

but instead
it stirred the ash
and made the electric lines sing
like ancient deities
and scattered the seeds across the soil
and raised the hairs up on my arms
like little wings

Stephanie a graduate of the Master of Professional Writing program at USC, and lives and writes in Los Angeles.