My body is a clock; my body is a vessel, a temple and a grave; my body is a traitor.
I run my fingers over my collarbones when I feel restless,
when I feel myself sprouting wings meant to carry me out of my 24th floor window,
a gray bird, flying, following the tradition of all the other women in my family.

For years now, I've been plucking feathers from my flesh
to keep from flying too far from the tree like my grandmother, my mother, my aunts.
I am the one who resisted eternal migration because I kept track of the bouts long enough to know
that it only takes ten days, nine days, eight for the sickness to run its course.

During each relapse, I can't eat, my beak sore from banging against closed windows.
I get lost on my way to work, the wind willing me in other directions. Sometimes, I fly too high. Why,
when some families inherit strong hands, do we inherit talons? Why, instead of widow's peaks,
do we create widowers of good men? Why is no generation spared the tendencies of flight?

When I am resurrected from bird back to woman my feathers molt, my wings retract.
The moment I can stand on my feet, I fall to my knees and curse Eve for the gifts she has given me.
The apple must have been at the top of the tree. She must have thought her dedication
was evolution when she willed herself wings to reach it, no patience to wait for it to fall.

I can only surrender to my inherited flight pattern, swooping low and swinging back up again,
sighing on the way. My great grandmother, our eldest bird, watches me, afraid. In her treasure box,
carved from the wood of the family tree, her way of remembering
all her little birds, I found a photograph of my grandmother, my mother, my aunts.

“Easter – 1984.” My grandmother's beak was turned down.
My mother was sprouting wings at just the age of nine.