A memory:
I am just a girl, with one skinny arm thrust from the car window. The hand cupped to cut the air: lifting.
I am too young, then, to have learned Bernoulli’s Principle, or to have heard the word “airfoil.” But still, my palm curls into the wind, without needing an explanation.
Without knowing why.
*
Then, too, there are my shoulder blades — the bones folded tight beneath the skin, in a shape that could only suggest what they might have been.
Or might still be.
*
And lastly, there is this:
the small, broken-winged bird still alive in my chest, beating against the bars of my ribcage.
Scuffling and fluttering to get free.
*
And so, at sunset, I go walking in the fields. (I have dreamed the moment so many times, it no longer seems strange.) In the center of the field I stand perfectly still, looking up, into clear blue air.
I feel my cupped hands lifting …
the bones in my shoulders shifting …
the bird in my chest hammering
against my sternum.
And I wait …
still I wait …
…to rise. ❤
ASHLEY WILSON FELLERS 
Rising to our potential. What beautiful evocative words.
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Thank you, Miriam.
Lots of rising left for both of us, I’m sure. 🙂
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Yes, I think so.
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😉
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Again and again.
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Thanks, Jeff. 🙂
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City Jackdaw still strives to take to the skies.
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Can’t keep a good man down. 😉
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A beautiful image
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Thank you, Derrick. Happy Monday! 🙂
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Beautifully constructed. Your words gave me a path that I followed. Lovely.
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I’m so happy to hear that this morning. We all need a new path, sometimes.
Enjoy this day! 🙂
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I absolutely love your use of imagery here. Waiting… … … The bird in my chest is definitely hammering to get out, but if I did open its cage, it wouldn’t know where to fly to or how.
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I so understand.
The moment always comes at the right time, somehow. And meanwhile: so much beauty in the waiting. ❤
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Yes, I know those feelings too!
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🙂 I’m so glad this resonated, C!
Happy Monday! Let’s both try to make a little beauty today. 🙂
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It’s such a beautiful piece of writing, though I’m not really sure what it’s about. I understand it as either rising from extreme difficulties OR rising to ones potential and unique place in this world. Anyhow, I find it lovely that you leave room for interpretation.
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Thank you, Heidi … And it sounds funny, but I sort-of love that you weren’t exactly sure what to make of this one. I wondered whether this one was too obvious, actually, and tried very hard to keep things a little watery and to leave room for your own thoughts and discoveries.
And I like *your* discoveries … A lot! 🙂
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