It's Still Life

This is a four-part Prosery, each one less than 144 words, written for dVerse Poets, and including the phrase “I have no skills for flight or wings to skim the waves effortlessly, like the wind itself.” from the poem “The Magnificent Frigatebird,” by Ada Limon

An Elegy for the Grounded

I. The Veil Tree

She climbed the yew tree to get closer—past birds, past breath, past rules. Her grandmother said it would come: the seventh veil, the seventh year, the seventh breath before sleep. “I have no skills for flight or wings to skim the waves effortlessly, like the wind itself,” she thought. “Just a spine too eager, just bones that want out.” So she climbed. Higher. Higher. The branches blurred into heartbeats. The sky forgot to end.

And then—she fell.
No scratch. No bruise. Just earth at her back, and the yew tree whispering,

Not yet, little one. Not yet.

She doesn’t tell anyone. She draws stars in dirt instead. Holds her breath for shorter spells. But something in her changed—a knowing under the skin—a door cracked open where the leaves still blink.

II. The Albatross Hour

I was told gravity will always win, but I keep building ladders from my ribs, each rung a wishbone cracking under the weight of wanting. I have no skills for flight or wings to skim the waves effortlessly, like the wind itself; just these crepe-flesh hands that knead bread like it’s a prayer, this spine that bends to lift buckets of well water glinting with stolen sky.

You laugh as I stumble, call me your albatross, all hunger and no harbour, but at night, I press my ear to the swell of an ancient chest—hear the tide trapped in its lungs, the way a heartbeat says not-yet, not-yet against the cage.

We’re creatures of salt and stubbornness. I’ll never ride the thermals, but haven’t you noticed? The whole world’s a wave—we’re already drowning in its shine.

III. The Refusal Tide

The sea asked me to become something else—salt-scaled, spine-loose, unafraid of storms. But I have no skills for flight or wings to skim the waves effortlessly, like the wind itself, but still, I wade, I drag my fingers through the shallows like a spell I once forgot, like memory made liquid.

The sky above me splits with gull cries, and I pretend—just for a moment—that gravity might take pity on my softness. A wave licks my ankle. It whispers become. But I do not.

I simply stay, ankles deep, rooted in my refusal, my longing a tether and a flame. I am not wind. I am not wing. I am the hush between the things that leave.

IV. The Morning of Wings

The horizon blushed with the first hints of dawn; a canvas painted in shifting blues, and I stood at the water’s edge, watching the frigatebirds wheel and dive, envied their grace. I have no skills for flight or wings to skim the waves effortlessly, like the wind itself, like a hush between tides, and I imagined what it would mean to rise above gravity’s hold, to ride the invisible currents, to let go of earthbound worries.

The birds soared, silhouettes against the awakening sky, and for a moment, I felt the echo of their freedom within my chest—a flutter, a longing, an ache. And though my feet remained planted in wet sand, my thoughts lifted, buoyed by the possibility that imagination alone might carry me—

if not across the sea,
then at least into the day ahead.