FATHER


    Casts feathers adrift on the salt spray, bloody foam staining them red then dragging them under. He can see it in the piss stains dissolving into nothing, in the pruny texture dessicating his fingers. Above, the sun is like a spotlight. Even when he closes his eyes; he doesn’t have to look at it to know it’s there. He can almost feel a wisp of smoke curling up from his skin, as if there were a coal still smoldering in one of his scars.


    F—


    FATHER


    —


    FATHER


    FATHER


    —


    —


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    seen this boy and eventually they would leave, grumbling.


    Where the sun god slapped him he can feel his face swelling, his eye is trickling down his face like tears, searing wax eating into his back, arching to stop it but never escaping, grabbing for feathers that shoot out of reach and without them he’ll die, wild groping at nothing, struggles with nothing, running in air, spiral burned feathers falling cloud waves sky waves sky burning throat lung shrieking FATHER


    —


    FATHER


    STOP, FATHER


    —


    this afraid, afraid enough to let tears and snot trickle together and all run into his mouth together while he sobbed. He wonders how much he’ll have to beg to get his father to let him back into the tower. He will certainly have to endure the dark looks, the terse responses to any attempt at conversation, the slaps out of nowhere. But he has the feeling something even worse will have to happen to make up for this, his father’s sole hope for months on end.


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