Party for 1 Graduation

Party for 1 // Allison Zheng

Graduation // Abigail Hodge I was not born with wings So I was shown how to build Feathers and wax and balsa wood pressed into my hands By teachers eager to give me the tools to fly Each feather a formula, a date, a bit of Shakespeare Flighty and fanciful and ready to be caught and carried by the wind Some feathers, of course, were self-referential Icarus and Bellerophon Men who wanted to carry themselves higher than their fragile wings could stand I glued their stories to my wings with the same wax that doomed Icarus And learned that the proud get no second chances A line was drawn in the sky Fly this high, little songbird. But no higher I was pushed from the nest with the clanging of the last bell On the last day of a sticky, sunny June With full-feathered wings strapped to my back I ran to the ocean And gazed out over the waves Their troughs like graves, ready to inter my hubris I grasped a bit of down in my fingers Remembering the day that I learned That the sun is so very far from us Millions and millions of miles And what could something so far away Do to me here?