Fly Away

I.
Walking home

So many invisible people on the street,
Too many lights

This voice will change.

Wrapped too tightly in my own thoughts
A black leash swinging from my hand

Something floats to the ground ahead of me
Catching my attention

Gray and light, drifting like snow or ash


A feather,
I am brought back into the physical world,
And I look around me, feathers falling noiselessly to the ground,
Tiny and the color of soft death,
A trail perpendicular across my own path

So very quiet, so very very quiet

Did she scream when she was torn from the air?
Or did he escape, missing only a few tufts of soft down?

II.
Dream-walking,
Music playing.

I catch the words just as the song ends.
I am so often too wrapped up in my own head
And I miss the world around me.

"I see fire"

Familiar and unfamiliar,
But suddenly the place ahead of me,
Just down the street--
Doesn't look like home anymore.

So I turn and run,
Loose shirt billowing in the wind
Like a skin shed
And flight taken.

III.
Now every third time I walk that road
I pause just before the fence that leads down the street
To the house I grew up in,
And I wait for that feeling,
Though that was summer
And this is winter
Masquerading as spring.