Annunciation

I learned to hide my wings almost immediately,

learned to tuck and bandage them down.

Long before the accident, before the glass shattering

and that scene going dim, dimmer, and then dark,

before the three fractures at the axis, three cracks

in the bone, it had already begun. My voice

had begun to deepen, the sound of it

suddenly more my father's than my own. My beard

had started growing, my bones growing, my bones

sore from the speed of their growth, and there,

at fourteen years of age, the first tugging

of the muscles between my shoulder blades.

It began as a tiny ache. It was just a minor irritation.

Day after day passed, and this ache grew,

and then the tips of the cartilaginous wings

began to tent my skin. Father Callahan

had already warned that in each of us

there was both potential for bad and good.

When trying to shave for the first time, I nicked

my cheek, the bleeding slow but continuous.

Standing there, dabbing at this small cut with tissue paper,

the first tear surprised me, the left wing heaving through

that fleshy mound of muscle between my shoulder blades

and then the skin. I buckled and, on my knees, the right wing

presented itself more rapidly than the left.

When I stood, there in the mirror, my wings outstretched

with their tiny feathers wet, almost glutinous, a quick

ribbon of blood snaking down my back. You wonder

why I am such a master of avoidance, such a master

of what is withheld. Is there any wonder, now?

I had no idea then they would wither and fall off

in a few weeks. When Father Callahan patted

my head in the sacristy and told me I was

a good boy, a really good boy, an extraordinary boy,

I wanted to be anything but extraordinary.

Source: The Halo (Four Way Books, 2016)