What wings are for

Weekends are for cousins fresh off planes,
farmers markets,
flowers like mouths,
peaches you want to kiss,
lemonade so sweet it makes your teeth hurt.
We drink it anyway.

The pavement is warm.
We eat there.
Bread, cheese, strawberries.
The dog stares at us like she knows something.
We don’t ask what.

Mornings are hikes—
early enough to pretend we’re the only ones alive,
late enough that the sun is already apologizing.
The coyotes have gone wherever coyotes go.
We don’t ask where.
We bring oranges.
We bring chatter.
We bring the version of ourselves we like best:
quiet, surefooted,
kind to the small things.

Nights are gummies and The Bear.
Everyone yelling, everything fast.
Love thrown like a plate: loud, messy,
borderline holy.

After it’s over, I Got You Babe gets stuck in my head.
I sing it into the shampoo bottle.
Into the fridge door.
Into the air, like someone might catch it.

We watched La La Land in a cemetery.
Blankets over graves.
People and tombs and jazz and heartbreak.
It wasn’t just a movie—
it was a time machine.
Every scene stitched to another version of myself.
Grief and glitter and ghosts.
The wind moved through the grass like a whisper.
I imagined the dead watching with us,
drinking it in,
weeping in the places I’ve wept before.
Fireworks at the end.
We snuck out before the crowds.
Quiet as bones.

My neighbor lost her bird.

She said, He couldn’t have gotten far.

And I wanted to laugh.

Because the sky is so big.

Because the sky is bigger than all of us.

Because wings are for leaving,

and he has wings.

But I didn’t laugh.

I nodded like you’re supposed to.

I said, I’ll keep an eye out, and I meant it, for maybe three days.

She put up signs.

Took the birdcage into the yard, left the door open.

In case.

In hope.

I think we all do this.

Leave something out.

Just in case.

I think once I did the same thing.

I didn’t put up signs.

I didn’t have a cage.

But I watched the sky for weeks.

I waited like I believed in it.