A Clinging Angel (Poem)

I collapsed onto my knees,

jolting my skin into pain,

watching small streams of blood begin to seep.

The room where I knelt held no light,

save the luminous sheen of a myriad of feathers,

strewn haphazardly from corner to corner, a blanket of sad white.

Handful after handful I picked up,

shoving the quills so obviously plucked with pain

down my throat,

the taste of blood from when it was wrenched  a metallic red on my tongue.

Startling tears gained the edge of my mouth as I gazed upwards while eating,

and saw,

clinging to the ceiling, a wingless angel.

She stared down at me intently as I ate hundreds of plucked feathers,

her pacific eyes spoke of limitless sadness,

her naked form, etched with a deity's certainty,

caught the pallid glow of the feathers in a light-less room,

and threw it to unbidden corners that howled under its beauty.

Her arms, dancing in ink, stretched towards my bent form,

each finger a different shade of silence beckoning me upwards.

Now standing,

Now numb arms pulling her down,

Now dry lips closing over an ocean.

Happiness shredding my body open,

as feathers seeped out of my skin and reassembled on her wings,

magnificent flight from a darkened room.