Metamorphosis after “The Addiction Bird” by Agnes Hanying Ong
We march. In our black suits draped in black trenchcoats huddled under black umbrellas, we climb toward the sky. In the stormy streaks of twilight, we ascend the mountain. Our bootsteps create a heartbeat rhythm that reverberates through the layers of metamorphic rock.
Reaching the peak, each of us in turn releases the umbrella and with arms outstretched we inhale, our skin sprouts feathers, lush onyx. Our humerus, radius, and ulna bones are hollowed transform into a shape made for flight. Wings spread and flap to thrust us into the air where we again fall in line, with a new rhythm vibrations permeating the atmosphere.
But you. You are at the end of the line and you choose another way. Your red umbrella in a sea of black marks our memories. The blood shed, all that was lost that we were made to forget. When you reach the peak, you leap. You leave the ground behind, you see the path of all those ahead, and you turn in the other direction, you find a new way forward.
Lauren Oertel is a writer, editor, and community organizer based in Austin, Texas. She is a writing workshop facilitator certified in the Amherst Writers & Artists method. Her work has been published in Black Fox Literary, The Westchester Review, Gemini Magazine, The Sun Magazine, and more. She has been a winner and finalist in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction contests with The Letter Review, Writer’s Digest, Prime Number Magazine, and others. Lauren is the coauthor of the book Inside Out: A Texas Prisons Poetry Story, and her debut full-length poetry collection, Scars & Other Luxuries, is forthcoming with Finishing Line Press in November.
