WEEK 5
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RED FEATHERS
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Red waves and oceans of blood. Mixed blood of all the different kinds. From all bodies. Cold blood, but also the warm kind. All as the ocean. Doctors couldn’t possibly use it for anything. Those kids will die anyway. Despite this ocean. Doctors couldn’t possibly use it for anything - it is only there to look at, to swim in. To get diseases from. To float on when you’re mourning. To sink into when you’re grieving. You drown faster in pools of blood. Maybe blood will drag you under faster. It is unlike saltwater, too thick to surf on. You’re gonna need a hot shower. A vulture had plunged in the red sea and I tried to clean it off with a toothbrush. I couldn’t tell anymore which feathers were his and which were mine. I was turning into one too, I thought I was just a little tweety bird. As I clean him off I want to eat him and drink myself to nothingness. Homeless vulture. I couldn’t possibly survive if I get close enough to the sun when I’m flying. It’ll burn me every time.

And is learning to fly learning to deal with the sting?

Do I continue to get close to my sun? Do I get used to the burn? I get close, I get too close. And again too close. “I WANT TO FLY!!!!!!!” And the rest of the birds tell me I crazy, but I know it already. They are right. I am flying too close, my feathers go up in flames and I smell like roasted chicken. Sweet surrender. I fall. Fall past the seagulls, the blue birds, all my friends - the ones who know what to do. The ones who know how this thing works. Sweet surrender. “I’ll never learn” I say to them as I drop. And they wave goodbye to me as I drop into the ocean. They know it too. My ocean of blood. Red is such a pretty color. It is so much easier to die in red. It is all very fashionable, a red death. 

Tres chic, my drowning. In my red feathers.