Your lungs have started to

grow tender wings,

like a bird,

hollow and soft.

You cough feathers in your sleep—

each one shaped like a word

you couldn’t say in time.

Your chest becomes

a ribbed aviary

where mourning doves nest

in the space grief made.

You try to speak

but language flutters out

as birdsong bruised in mid-air.

Like apologies stitched in ash.

You know molting

when you feel it—

the ache of leaving

your own skin behind

just to keep flying

toward a light

you never believed in.

And somewhere in that ascent,

you name pain

with a softness

sharp enough

to be mistaken for prayer.

But 

You are becoming a cathedral

made of soft machinery.

Half-flight, half-failure.

The kind of thing God doesn’t notice

until it begins to curse.

And even then,

He only listens

because the metal inside you

starts to sing.

Because somewhere between

flesh and forgiveness,

you grew a throat

not made for mercy—

but for memory.

And isn’t that what flying is?

Leaving

louder than you ever lived.

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