#theoldestprodigy

“No, you don’t want to be like me.

Girls like me, they fly young.

They fly high, too high, they taste the sun’s warmth, they get crowned with laurel and gold by the world.

Some are lucky,

like you,

their wings aren’t made haphazardly with crayon wax and craft feathers,

they’ve got a spacesuit fitted around them, they break out of the atmosphere and they get to space.

Oxygen, it kills slowly, you know? Normalcy, it kills slowly, you know?

Some aren’t lucky, like me, their wings are just crayon wax in a color a few shades off from their favorite, and craft feathers, notebook pages, homework sheets, stuck together, maybe mistaken for recycling paper,

and if they get to fly at all, the crayon wax melts and papers come crashing down once they’re too close to the sun’s warmth.

They come crashing down, back into the atmosphere,

with the oxygen that slowly kills, with the normalcy that slowly kills, with the broken bone that slowly kills.