ema"

hold me gently, like I'm something precious, made of glass or porcelain𓏧 like even the gentlest of movements could shatter me. tell me how you treasure me so, cradle my face and wipe away my tears. teach me how to feel loved in your embrace.

I'd stand in the yard squinting at a flicker of something bright, fading away, dissolving into blue. She'd been up there so long, all that empty sky between us, but from down here she was barely anything. So I started talking about the ground. To bring her closer. How warm it was. How things grew here, rising up from the dirt. How there was a bed waiting, and a window where the light came in sideways in the mornings and made everything gold.

She came down from there eventually. Folded her wings and sat in my lap as I watched her feel gravity for the first time. The gentle pull of everything toward everything else. Being wanted by the whole world at once. I held one of her wings, fragile and impossibly soft, and reached for the scissors. As I cut, the feathers drifted to the floor, and by the time they landed they were already just ordinary things.