Rip

it settles over your eyes like fog
and you are too tired to push it away
you have been too tired for ages now, your
limbs collecting dust and your hair matted

you suspect that you were born with wings
lithe and delicate, made (you think)
of woven silver and parchment
they might have carried you off already

had it not been for the drought
that withered them from your shoulders
and your own temporality.
you are no longer infinite.

now flight is a childhood memory at best
and you are tethered fast to solid ground
and abandoning your wings
has left you exhausted

so you have made camp here on Earth
among the gray tree roots
and fallen into a twenty-year sleep
while wars are waged and won

and when it settles over your eyes like fog
this hopelessness that you cannot see through
you let your lids fall heavy again, and
you sink and drift and fade

it seems better to sleep and dream of the sky
than wake and watch it slip away