Someone once told me that wings were growing

 out of her shoulder blades

At First,

I didn’t believe her-

Not until the day that she took off her shirt to show me

Where it itched,

Where the feathers were breaking through her skin.

Angry maroon marks interrupted the smooth skin of her back

But-

I didn’t say a word when she asked me to scratch the spot

Between her 5th and 7th vertebrae.

Months later, she showed me again.

I didn’t recognize that the four layers of baggy clothing that she wore

Wasn’t a collective shield to protect her from the cold winds of December,

But to hide the extreme weight loss that had taken a terrible toll on her body.

The scratches were canyons that spanned across the bony ridges of shoulders

And her skin –

Stretched too tight across the sharp edges of her shoulder blades-

Resembled a thin translucent layer of ice,

Multi-faceted from the blue and purple veins 

That created unintelligible maps

Under her skin and over her bones.

‘Can you see them?

 They’re right there,

 just underneath the surface,

I can feel them more now,

It’s almost time.’

I asked her why she was so thin

If she had been eating

If she had seen a doctor,

She said ‘No, silly,

I’m preparing for my wings-

My angel wings

You don’t need those things

When you have angel wings’

That time I told someone.

She was put in the ICU

Too weak to fight back

She’d been starving herself for weeks

And she couldn’t hold down food.

I visited her once at the hospital

Tubes trailed from her arms to bags of fluid

In a desperate attempt to restore what she once was.

But the doctor said her chance of recovery was ‘slim to none’

I stayed by her side and held her hand in her light slumber

She woke up once

And I saw the light in her eyes brighten for just a moment as she whispered

Softly, faintly

‘I’ve got my wings now

I can feel them

They feel so light’

The light faded

But it was okay because

I knew -

I knew she had Finally gotten her angel wings.