Phalanges (Wings), by Kila Greene

It’s a Thursday, Maddie’s longest day of the week this semester; four classes, the last ending at nine PM. She crammed herself into a corner seat for that one, fluorescent flicker of overhead lights spreading like an itch over her skin. Her ears felt full of static. She tried to claw meaning out of the professor’s words while her fingertips mapped the edges of her kneecaps beneath the table.

She’d hoped before the class started that Ren might be taking it too, because they were a fellow freshman and they’d smiled at Maddie and their voice had been kind and she’d thought maybe, maybe a friend. But by the time the clock struck nine she was glad they weren’t there, didn’t see her freaking out over nothing.

Now, classes concluded, the late hour submerging the campus into quiet, Maddie stumbles forward till her sandalled feet find shallow scrub grass growing between the barren, hard-packed desire paths that connect sidewalks. She stops, surrounded by live oaks, their gnarled branches twisted into an overhead tapestry that weaves through the stars. Night breathes around her. Leaves clatter in a warm breeze that smells of far-off ocean. She closes her eyes, but that only amplifies the buzzing beneath skin; opens them, sees silver light and shivering shadows.

Loud. Everything in the classroom tonight was too loud: the voices, the whine of fluorescent tubes. She can’t always see their flicker, but tonight she could, and it strobed to the center of her brain. The dark can’t drive it out. It has dug in, built fortifications. The world pulses around her like a heartbeat, spaces between objects growing bigger and smaller and bigger again.

Her hands twitch. Fingers flutter.

In the moonlight, a ghost built from gleam and shadow: her mother, mouth downturned, voice horribly soft as she asks,Don’t you want to make friends? Don’t you want people to think you’re normal?

She means well, breathe a dozen other ghosts, their voices made of wind.She does it out of love. She wants what’s best for you. Shouldn’t you appreciate that?

Maddie’s mother multiplies, fractals, a dozen mothers shoulder to shoulder, pressed near, living bars of a cage.I love you, say her mothers, close, close, as the beehive buzz beneath Maddie’s skin swells and stings.I only want what’s best for you. I want you to have friends. But you have to be normal.

Maddie gulps gasps of sweet-scented air. Her limbs shudder. She swings her arms up and down, up and down, palms cupped to catch the night.

Quiet, quiet, croons her mother.

No, says the prickle under Maddie’s skin, a lightning hum of power growing and growing.No. Loud.

Everything is so loud at her, all the time, so why shouldn’t she be?

Her fingers vibrate, a prickle beneath the nails. Maddie looks down to find feathers, moon-dappled silver and brown. They stretch, spreading, phalanges merging and searching for air. With a final flick of her wrists they break loose and rise, and she sees, suddenly, through new eyes—ground and horizon in perfect focus, moonlight outlining new edges and limning new paths. She senses the pull of the poles. She feels oriented in open space.

She flies up, up, stars overhead, and wrists and ankles and arms and legs sprout feathers, grow eyes, lift free. Know with perfect clarity what they are and where they belong.

A human shape stands at the edge of the oak grove, face upturned, and Maddie—the birds that are Maddie—knows it. Recognizes the striped purple and yellow hoodie, though moonlight fades it to shades of gray.Ren, think the birds, and a feeling shivers through Maddie that might be regret.

Ren’s eyes widen, and their expression opens into something like wonder. They reach up with both hands. Though the wind has stilled, Ren’s short, spiky hair shifts and quivers and rises—and then everything beneath it bursts into a flurry of fluttering that ascends to meet Maddie in the endless openness of the night.

Kila Greene

Kila Greene is a queer, neurodivergent Texan. When not reading, writing, or hanging out with her clowder of cats, she enjoys knitting and wandering in wild places.

Bluesky: kilagreene Mastodon: wandering.shop/@greene