Wing.

I feel tears collect at the corner of my eyes. A small price to pay for the bigger picture. She shifts her frame and stretches out her bony hands. I can count the battles won all I want, but the skeleton is still blinking at me. I think she’s the wind, a small breeze passing trough, one that no one ever wants to leave. Maybe she’s just the clouds on a rainy day, I don’t know. I watched her heart multiply and divide inside her chest, banging and clanging around. I saw the stars in her eyes and watched the constellations dance in every movement of her hips. I watched broken wishes fall from her lips and collect around her feet, like a puddle that no one wants to step in.

She’s looking up now, staring into the buzzing, fluorescent lights. Her eyes are washed out, but still manage to sparkle. She can’t see what I see. She can’t see the bigger picture. She sees battles won, but not the war lost. She sees glory and beauty and shade and pain. But she never sees the thread connecting it all, the places where bones meet.

She breaks blue ribbons in her mind and watches leaves race from their trees. She’ll look through windows, but the crystal clear glass is a barrier. She wraps herself in fog, twirls through the streets where it hangs low and ominous. But it’s her friend. She’ll graze the bark of trees and call it her home, but the tips of the trees can’t be seen.

She mixes greens and oranges and purples and reds in her mind. Thick brush strokes cover the canvas, but the walls remain blank and starchy white. A kaleidoscope of seasons blend in her head and the days pass her by. A most perfect voice weaves in and out of my ears, her static accent rings through my ears with a crackling explosion.

Fireworks explode in her mind, all brilliant and beautiful, wondrous and divine. But she’s still the same old pale, emaciated cadaver, staring blankly at the fluorescent lights, just trying to make a home in her mind, the only place she knows.

She’s magic.

And I am the spellbound patient that just couldn’t get in.