I was six. No, five, I was five: my first snow.
I remember the angel suddenly coming together
and then bleeding out beneath me
like I was turning myself inside out,
and then I remember awakening
to a white field, because the angels
were always a surprise to me,
the way they kept falling in such
peculiar positions, like someone
screaming, or dying. Like the wings.
Friends would take me aside,
tell me the wings were a bit too much:
Like a Babylonian lion's, really.
Those wings, they'd say.
They were right of course,
but what could I say to them except
I couldn't help it, that my arms
always moved up and down like that
whenever I fell out of heaven.
Sometimes I felt like telling them
maybe it would help
if they thought of the angels
as small relief-maps of my soul,
sudden, uncontrolled curdlings
that occurred whenever I stopped,
opened myself to the sun, or the moon.
And then there were times
I didn't know what to say, except
maybe they should think of the angels
as detailed descriptions of another life.
A life I was living but knew nothing about.