angel bird 

the first human to grow feathered wings 
will feel terribly out of place.
she will take comfort in knowing 
most humans feel misplaced.
despite not having wings. 
people will spend all day mistaking her
for both an angle & a bird. 
when she is an angel, they will bring her offerings
of caesar salad & wendies gift cards--
shoving their gifts at her while she tries 
to fit her wings down a grocery aisle
to buy a box of granola bars. 
they will ask her to bring messages to god.
when she is young, she will protest, 
but as she gets older
she will assume the role. 
she will carry strangers hopes inside her,
walking out into her backyard & pretending 
to send them off into the sky as birds.
to learn how to fly she will have jumped 
from the roof of her parent's house 
over & over on saturday afternoons
when other children were walking plastic dolls across carpets. 
she will tape lined-paper wings to her dolls 
& toss them off her top bunk.
they will fall hard on the floor.
she will cradle her dolls & tell them she is sorry.
when she is seen as a bird, she will flicker
in the binoculars of neighbors.
the neighbors might hang up stripes of aluminum 
which is supposed to scare birds away
or they might hang bird feeders.
she will want to eat from them, 
bot because she's really part bird
but because they suggest that inside
all people are welcoming when it suites them.
she will fly to an office job 
where she does data entry 
so no one has to see her wings.
she will hate them somedays & other days
she will wonder if she really is an angel 
forced to live on earth. she will have a friend
who believes she had wings in a past life.
this will not be true but she will be happy 
for a friend. they will discuss the possibilities 
of their origins. they will build nests
& try to sleep in them. many many days
she will wish she were just a bird.
their mouths full of seed. their breif singing lives.
she will grow old & some of the feather will fall out.
she will fly from town to town,
sleeping in empty attics & roosted in trees.
when she is waking up
she will think faintly of her mother
who loved her feathers most of all,
who collected them as she molted the first time,
saving them in a Ziploc bag.