“You kept all the things I threw away
A leaf I picked
A birthday card I made”
————

She sits on her bed and wonders why she ever thought love was a good idea. She should know better, really. She should. She knew love would hurt her.

But still, she loved. She thought he wouldn’t be the one who would pluck the feathers from her wings.

And the crash still hurts.

She still has her wings, stripped bare, in a small box under her bed, along with the rest of her memories. She thinks she’ll never be able to open them.

She loves differently, she knows. When she loves, she gives everything. And so when her wings are ripped from her, she falls with nothing.

——
“Holding onto memories of you and me
We didn’t last a year
We’re just a box of souvenirs”
——

She doesn’t cry, which many people find strange. Her tears are stolen by the obsidian-fingered night, soaked by white sheets and the moon’s cold curve.

She walks, lips pulled in a faint smile. The bitterness seeps from every one of her movements, from the betrayal in her eyes to the flutter of her fingers over her heart.

It’s just love. It shouldn’t hurt so much. But she has no love, which is what no one realizes. She has never quite had love. He was love, and she gave him it all. Now, she has to craft a new reserve of love, saltier than it was before.

The memories dance gracefully at the foot of her bed, ready to surround her in the lone hours. The box of her past sits peacefully under her bed, silent but heavy.

——
“Maybe I pulled the panic cord
And maybe you were happy,
I was bored”
——

She was so naïve. He was her world, and when she saw the sky was a beautiful, endless blue, she found more than he to love. He didn’t like that.

She loved him no less. But he loved her less.

How naïve she was. How hopelessly, foolishly naïve.

When he clipped her wings, the sky was lost to her. She didn’t understand why.

Now she does, and the sky beckons to her but she has lost her courage.

——
“Maybe I wanted you to change
Maybe I’m the one to blame”
——

They were young. And maybe, he wanted them to stay young. He wanted her to be his, and his alone.

Why? she wants to cry at him. Why, when we could have been beautiful?

But he has long since stopped answering. She wonders if he ever thinks how they could have been, if he had not been blinded by his jealousy.

She wonders if she’s to blame for their broken hearts. She wonders if he ever thinks he is.

——
“This meant more to you than it did to me
I was full of doubts, and you believed”
——

He had not been the only blind one. She had been, as well. His eyes had been focused on the ground below, ready to dive and she—she had been fixated upon the flawless blue.

She had given her all, and if he had, she would never know.

But she did know that when she had believed, he had already been dreaming of crashing to the ground, wingless and dying.

It shouldn’t hurt her as much as it does. They were both young. Young and foolish.

——
“The more that you come over, the more I know it’s over, dear
We’re just a box of souvenirs”
——

She doesn’t want to love anymore. When she thinks about, she imagines layering her heart with steel, she imagines stripping the petals from the rose, merciless. She cannot love. She cannot break. She will not.

She doesn’t look at her broken wings. She tries not to think about the dark box under her bed, singing mournfully to her.

She dreams, at night, of the breathless blue. But she never thinks about it when she is awake.
It is more than she wishes to ever hope for.

Love hurts. She knows that. She’s no longer naïve. He saw to that.

She won’t let love hurt her again.

——
“Maybe you were just too nice to me
And maybe it took me way too long to leave”
——

Her heart is dipped deep in metal, her feet entrenched into the ground. Her lips are firm in a not-quite scowl or smile. Her eyes are hard and only soften, barely, on the occasions she smiles.

Thank you, she should say to him. Thank you for plucking my feathers before I flew too high. Because the fall had hurt her, but she had survived.

It doesn’t mean she is healed. Her back still aches where wings had once unfurled from. Tears still drip from the cold steel encasing her heart, her armor.

Thank you, she says silently, for showing me the ground is always waiting beneath the sky.

And she tucks him away into her box of souvenirs, not unkindly, because she does not want him to hurt her anymore. She will not allow him to, anymore.

Besides, she never opens the box.

——
“Maybe once we felt the same
Maybe I’m the one to blame”
——

The past is in the past, although it has weathered her down into a lonely figure.

They had been, once. They had been.
They are no more.

The night has no more tears to steal from her.

——
“Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do
That’s the way the story goes”
——

She steps up towards the blue, her back bare, and watches others weave and dance through the sweet air. The gentle wind embraces her, and her feet are planted firmly on her stepping stones.

She has taken back the sky, but it’s not quite the same without the deliciously cool air running streaks through her wings.

This time, she has no wings. She is ready for her fall, but she is back in the sky, back in the heavens. She has missed it.

She wonders if missing the sky is same as missing her wings.

She doesn’t think she’ll ever know the answer to that question.

——
“Maybe I’m the one to blame”
——

When she falls, she is ready.

Her eyes close as the earth rushes to claim her, and her eyes close as a faint sigh curls from her lips.