Inhaling doesn't hurt so much 
when living is the only loyalty. 
No, what hurts is the glance away, eyes 
that yank the flesh they once beheld, 
like waxing strips left on too long, too deep. 
Blood rivulets run through 
five o'clock shadow flumes 
while feathers lay shredded on the floor. 

I never imagined her tiger irises 
would seal themselves in a maple chest 
impenetrable, covered in ebony vines 
and thorns oozing ink. The stalks writhe 
thick, piled and knotted like decades 
of detritus on a rainforest floor. 
I spread white wings and fly over the canopy 
to seek a hint of glinting panels 
hiding what once was worth so much, 
to know the treasure at least sits safe in the wild. 
But I cannot dive beneath thick clouds 
wreathing in branches heavy-hung with moss. 

I can sense when I get closer, for the cold condenses 
on my feathers. I feel faint, small and thin, folding 
into my chest to preserve the warmth my heart 
still beats to provide. The flumes connect in a ravine. 
Desperation sees me pump harder and find a thermal 
— any thermal, even if a predator is near, I don't care — 
to rise above until the sun chars my wingtips to fine ash. 
Better to succumb to gravity's crush feeling another's heat 
than slowly freeze, isolated, without regard. 

Pieces of my skull rattle like kettledrums in my head 
while symphonic violins swell with a storm encroaching, 
lifting me up again in whirling winds, battering 
my legs, vulnerable, stretched out in the sky 
always searching, longing for the path behind me 
to touch talons again. Taut muscles relax against the rain 
knowing to fight will roll me over and under until 
I suffocate in layers of mud where once was home. 
The screaming squall tugs me into a gorge. 
Low flight leaves me almost grounded, drenched through 
almost to the hollow bones that barely enliven me. 
Pulled along a path I cannot plot, 
I pray to no one, for no one is listening. 

Author’s note: My best friend ended our friendship last month suddenly with no real reason. “It’s not you, it’s me; we’ve grown apart.” I did not feel the same, but respected her wish. I wrote this poem both as therapy for my grief and as a response to a poem she wrote to me some years ago.