A prayer of sorts
Discovering the limits of my cosmetic surgery insurance cover
Please could you give me gills like the speckled fish that glisten and glint in the drowning pool eyes of the Eden? Cut me right here, below the hinge of the ever talkative jaw. Install the specified cartilaginous contraptions - just back from the carotid pulse and its endless marching rhythm, advancing night and day. Fit the hard outer flaps and the soft filigree folds. The blood must lean so close into the water's lick that she can taste the salt. Do it quick. My love, the river, is waiting for me to breathe her breath and snuffle under the alder roots of her flowing hair. There, where the big trout lies the summer long, I'll press my flank to the weight of her. She will pass over me like a shiver.
No? No gills? I see. It was not included in the plan.
Please, then, give me wings like the bonny black birds of the fells. I would go where the ravens rattle the mahogany beads of their voice, wing-tip dipping the ink-pots of the high tarns. We'll scrawl our calligraphy on the velum of the sky. We'll tickle the ribs of the rising air as it plays hide and seek with the scarps and the screes.
Drill into me, just here where the scapulas can best bear the load. Aren't our little wings already half-formed, hiding behind their flimsy alibi of flesh?
I'll gladly pay the excess.
Neither wings nor gills? I understand. Yes, I should have read the contract.
Well, could you still do me a little tune-up? A tweak to the lilt of the larynx. Maybe a bit of a lift on the high notes? As a lonely child I longed to be in harmony with the robin. He always sang the song of my awakening, knowing full well that I was still too young. That time would pass. And now that I am old, I have found the secret places where bloody ochre spills from the iron-pan heart of the earth. When I rub some on my chest the little bird will know that I am serious. That we fly the same banner. We'll stand guard at either end of the vegetable patch and sing a duet.
Clause 14b. 'No shapeshifting procedures.' Yep, I guess that's clear enough.
'Mend and make do,' was all she could prescribe, and sent me on my way. And really, what more could I have asked for, if not this tongue I was born with, if not these lips, forming the words to sing my love to the river, to paint my graffiti on the clouds, to tell the robin's tale?
“Please, then, give me wings like the bonny black birds of the fells. I would go where the ravens rattle the mahogany beads of their voice, wing-tip dipping the ink-pots of the high tarns”
Stunning and magical. Oh yes,wings please, that is, as long as I can keep the rest of my human form intact. Would not want to end up inside a fable. Written as a cautionary tale, with a moral to the story; careful what you wish for. I would be happy to do a search for an insurance policy in the U.S. that might cover with a prior authorization from a reputable wizard. What’s that you say? You have no intention to move to America, even if you could have gill surgery? Yeah, at the moment, I don’t blame you.
Thank you David for your inspiringwords, and the little humourous twist of Clause 14b....
Memory walls are weakening, I've forgotten Clause 14b, as I shed layers of skin, grow feathered and furred, untuck my wings and fly out of the skeleton that's been my prison.