Skybones and Silence

I saw you today—or maybe I didn’t—maybe it was just a bird,

or maybe the sky cracking open, stretching its yawning mouth,

spitting out light, spitting out the last place you stood,

but not spitting you back.

You always said the sky was a door, not a roof,

a soft thing, a stitched thing, a thing with seams

you could slip through if you knew how.

I didn’t know how.

You did.

And then—

gone.

Did you climb? Did you fall up instead of down?

Did the wind pull you by your wrists, whisper

come, come, the ground is too heavy, the ground is too slow?

Or did you just—let go?

I shouted your name but my mouth was full of echoes,

full of saltwind, full of nothing, full of the way

things stop existing the second you blink.

And I blinked.

And now you are skystuff,

cloud-threaded, feather-warm, stitched into the sun’s ribs.

I waited for something—

a sign, a shadow, a dropped feather,

but the sky is greedy and keeps what it takes.

You never liked greedy things.

Are you fighting it?

Are you still you?

Or did the sky eat you up,

bones and laughter and all,

until you were nothing but hush,

nothing but flight,

nothing but a bird too far gone to call home?

Maybe I should open my hands.

Maybe I should fall up too.