I am smouldering in these ashes,
the heat is consuming me alive. This wasted form, this wasted life, converting to feathers and wings in an alchemy of regret, relief, a slow-roasting torture. Let me burn cleanly in a white flame, let every cell of me transmute from misery to joy, from stagnation into flight. For in the end there is
a stirring in the cinders,
a stretching, a realization--
let me remember that first arching
of my new long neck,
the first tentative reaching out
till I feel my new span,
the moment of tensely gripping
the dirt between my toes
before I push it all away
and soar,
till the pile of flaky grey
is a distant memory
and I am finally, finally
lost in the rising from it.