Paper Suns

My love. I tended him

after he fell. His charred wing stumps,

his elegy of scabbed feathers. Only then

would he accept a bed, me

in it. The memory burnt into his limbs

burned me, too, so that only my negative remained

in what amputated dreams he had, what

eerie ornithology haunted him. My hybrid,

neither bird nor angel—I came

to gather what boy there was left

to salvage.

I fold him paper suns, light them

on fire, hurl them skyward,

a revenge I can offer.

For a moment, the sun in his face,

twinned in his eyes.

For a moment, not the sun, but his face,

its reflection like the sun,

like an old story. In the water,

another sky, a ghost sun.

He didn’t know at first

if he was falling or flying.

Which was his sun?

He, my sun.