Diane LeBlanc
HOW TO WRITE AN ELEGY
Salvage the tin wings you find strapped to a chain link fence.
Choose an adjective for absence.
Name the missing body after your best friend in kindergarten and make it a paper nametag hung on thick blue yarn.
Devote several years to summoning angels in bars and thrift stores, believing you can mend the thinnest specimen of faith.
Then, on a rainy night in April, close the curtains and slip your arms through the wires that hold the wings. Don’t be surprised if the wire cuts. Put on your flannel robe and try again.
As you look in the mirror and see the wings sagging from your shoulders, ask yourself how it came to this. Salvage and grief. Nostalgia. And now regret.
You could have left the wings where you found them. You could have imagined a body. And what lovely paint you could have made of quince and mud to bloody the wings.
But you didn’t.
The wings smell faintly of an old watering can. They make your tongue ache for rain.
Spend the evening wondering if the wings you’ve put on are more like a rosary than a costume, once blessed never to be worn. But keep the question to yourself. Tomorrow you’ll return the wings to the fence, and the story you tell will have no yarn or robe or regret.