I keep sinking deeper into the heat of these sheets, wings sprawled like wounded banners across the mattress. Fever clings to me in a way shame never could, slow, deliberate, seeping into each trembling feather until even the smallest movement feels like it might shatter me.
There’s a sweetness to being this helpless, but it terrifies me too. Angels aren’t meant to crumble; we’re meant to glow, to endure, to rise. And yet here I lay: a soft, breathless ruin swaddled in cotton and moonlight, tasting salt on my lips and not sure if it’s from sweat or the threat of tears.
I keep imagining an older presence in the doorway, someone whose voice knows how to settle. Someone who doesn’t recoil at the sight of an angel sick to the bone, feathers dulled, grace flickering like a dying lantern. Someone who could sit beside me and smooth the tangles from my wings with the slow patience of a person who’s tended to fragile things before.
I imagine their touch... warm, steady, unhurried. Fingers tracing the overheated ridges where wings meet spine. A palm against my cheek, grounding me back into my own body. A quiet murmur telling me to breathe, to rest, to let myself be held for once instead of holding everything together like i've been ordered too before.
It’s foolish to believe, maybe, this longing to be cared for instead of revered. To be folded into someone’s arms, not because I’m divine, but because I’m exhausted. Because even angels ache. Even angels will cry for touch they have yet met.
And tonight, lying here feverish and feather-torn, I ache for someone older, someone gentle, someone who knows how to gather up a trembling thing without asking it to pretend it’s whole.
If they walked in now, I think I’d melt into them. I think I’d finally let myself be small. A bedridden angel yearning for hands that know how to mend illness without judgment.