Scaly edges pierce eggshell: my oval microcosm of speckled beige – limited, yet a thinly protective sphere.
Siblings dispersed, hatching to dilating day-lit skies and mother’s sheltering feathers. Feather-winged, like her. Fitted into a puzzle. Her pieces.
Not so, this fate, for me.
My edges are sharp, toughened as steel cornices. I choke on flames – knowing I’m different.
I patter discontentedly, innately perceiving a world – one elongated ahead as taut elastic. One where scales are not accepted nor hot-flame breath. An existence where a man can crumble to ashy dust from a plume of distaste, cannot be tolerated. Mankind will view me as a villain: disdain pouring from clenched lips.
As fragments of shell cascade amidst held wings, unopened fans of propellent force, I admire belted rays of sunlight. Bands warm troughs and peaks of my verdant skin like a reduced in size mountain range. As my wingtips expand, more shell dispels, flaking before my beating heart.
Man will fear me.
They will come – summoning blood spill.
I sense hellish flair, even now, within teething, infantile hours, coursing vivaciously.
None will survive belly-deep roars, nor cast sight away to a more tender species, petting absentmindedly whilst entangling fingers into furred oblivion.
I am the future.
Here, and now, my clawed feet stomp the earth, grounding eggshell roots to powdery forgetfulness.
Upwards, I soar to shaky plains where God stands by an easel, casting futures with daubs of metallic paint.
She is a mother and English teacher. She has poetry published with various literary journals and magazines. She enjoys writing flash fiction and short stories also. Emma won Wingless Dreamer’s Bird Poetry Contest of 2022 and her short story entitled ‘Virginia Creeper’ was selected as a winning title by WriteFluence Singles Contest in 2021. Her first novel is entitled Shelley’s Sisterhood which is due to be published in 2023.
