you took me to my first blueberry patch and the whole way there i complained about why we couldn’t go to pick strawberries instead until you told me the story about when you were seven and you ate the whole carton on your own and broke out in hives and now you itch every time you see them. so i told you about when i was nine in the backseat of the car and i ate my first hard candy and choked and haven’t been able to swallow pills since. by the end of the day our hands were stained blue and i was lightheaded and heavy-eyed and the whole car ride home we talked about heaven. i said you could probably eat the dead the stars and they taste like lemonade and are softer than velvet and make you light up from the inside out so that you look like a real angel. you said the clouds serve as private islands and you can swim in the sky because being permanently away from the sea would be too terrible to imagine. you said the angels all talk to you like they know you by name and they all have jagged teeth and pastel hair but their voices sound like the lullabies your mother sang to you when you were still small enough to fit in the crib. i said that there has to be multiple gods and if you’re quiet enough you can hear them apologize to all the fallen angels.

you ate butterflies for breakfast because you said you wanted to know what my anxiety felt like and i told you that i didn’t want sympathy, i wanted to be able to throw up the wings. you said maybe i had flowers growing in my stomach and that i should be happy that at least the bees hadn’t stung their way through my skin. you convinced me that my veins were laced with pollen and that sometimes blooming had to be painful because you were breaking your roots. you told me about how you swallowed one too many watermelon seeds when you were a kid and you didn’t spit out the sunflower seeds and you were always worried that the neighborhood birds would end up trying to peck you to death. there’s no vines growing in your stomach now but that’s never stopped you from talking to pigeons like you’re speaking a secret language. i think we both have a fascination with wings and sometimes at night i touch your shoulder blades and tell you that yours would have been the color of ivory with green tips and dots in the dead center that are as black as bird’s eyes. we turn it into a game. some days mine are lighter than lavender, throbbing and pulsing with a cotton candy pink. other days they’re a dark blue, clouding up with grey around the edges. yours always stay consistent, ivory, laced in gold.