The Wings
Published in West Trade Review, Volume 15, Spring 2024

 

"The Wings" is a lyric essay shaped by loss, myth, and maternal devotion. Weaving memory and imagination, it tells the story of a mother secretly crafting wings for her son while facing her own death — and the haunting legacy of love, unfinished. This piece explores what we carry, what we leave behind, and what it means to live on borrowed time.

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Each night, she worked in secret to finish the wings, majestic and ornate, stitched with a mother’s love for her only son. She must have known that it would be hard to protect him. He was, after all, also living on borrowed time.

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The night before she died, my mother stood in her bedroom, in front of her dressing table, with the three mirrors. With great care, she lifted the great carcass of the wings. The frame was too heavy for her small and frail body. She balanced them awkwardly over her bony shoulders, turning this way and that. The wings carried the desolation of the moors, the darkness of the woods, and the aching call of the sea.

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