Lepidoptera
Her family had no wings, only legs that could traverse blocks at street level, where no one was allowed since the Sickness.
Not nectar. Food,
They had no wings, only skinny arms and legs that could traverse blocks at street level, where no one was allowed since the Sickness. She knew others might think of how wings could help you fly away, at least, to a friend’s house—like the girl she knows three blocks down—not so far away, but impossibly distant since everything metamorphosed. She thought instead of the nervous chatter that now wafted throughout her house. She understood that her birthday gift, so surprising, could make her a helper to her parents, who could use a child to float above the city from a bird’s-eye view to find them what they’d need for today, for tomorrow, until the Sequestering was lifted and she might think of her wings differently, like a child would.
Abby Manzella is the author of Migrating Fictions: Gender, Race, and Citizenship in U.S. Internal Displacements. Her writing has appeared in Literary Hub, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, Brevity, Kenyon Review, and the Boston Globe. Find her on Twitter @abbymanzella.
Enter your email address to receive notifications for author Abby Manzella
Success!
Confirmation link sent to your email to add you to notification list for author Abby Manzella
More in this series
You and Me, Bird
Your near-life experiences have coalesced in this momentary identity. You are a woman speeding along I-10 with a caged green-cheeked conure chirping by her side.
150 bpm
It’s the heartbeat that I can’t forget. When the sonogram technician held her transducer to my abdomen and turned up the sound I was surprised by its rapidity.
The Smell of All Mothers
It was That Smell, that-so-familiar-one that hurt me not to remember where I’d smelled it before.