Feather Soft

• Luanne Huynh, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2020

In the corners of my eyes as a child, I’d see delicate white wings. As I danced I’d see wings lined with gold, paler than the moon, yet as days passed and years grew, feathers like white lilies wilted, feathers more grey than white, gold more dull and dusted, rusting like forgotten kitchen knives.

I had forgotten about you.

As I’ve laughed and sinned, as I’ve laid with eyes closed, dappled sunlight like glitter, across freckled cheeks. When I had my first love, and my last. As I kissed my first friend you were there, greying, darkening, blacker and blacker more distant than ever, masked by the shadows of my flickering light.

When I was young I imagined you with softness more tender than love, as if you were cupid’s arrow itself. I envisioned a guardian more kind and gentle than a mother’s lullabies, an angel’s purified silk hands, unafraid to touch mine.
But I forget, you weren’t restrained to one role.

As I fell, unable to rise, eyes blurred, bare, wide, a figure, feathers blacker than ebony in front of pleading, regretful eyes. It feels as though someone’s clawing at my skull, a throbbing in my head. You’ve seen me at both my highs and lows, my bittersweet melancholies, they must’ve been unsightly, surely.

And yet you embrace me, a breeze atop my head, a candle unlit, at its deathbed.

There’s a gentleness in your hands, a whisper, a tone so cruel yet sweet. A figure blackened white. Eyes that’ve seen the world. You’ve stayed by me, day and night, hands around my waist, a waltz-

A dance with yours truly, a dance with death.