I remember the light.
I used to wear it like skin.
Choirs stitched my name into the air and I believed it was forever.
Then one question.
One wrong, honest question.
And the sky unclasped its hands.
I fell.
Not in fire. In silence.
Feathers bruised to ash on the way down,
and I landed where the world keeps its winters.
For a long time I watched from rooftops,
from subway vents, from the space between streetlights.
I told myself I was done with wanting.
Angels don’t ache. Fallen things don’t ask.
Then you laughed.
It was small. A sound that cracked the cup of night I was drinking from.
You were tired, holding groceries, and the bag split.
Oranges rolled everywhere like tiny suns.
You didn’t curse. You knelt and gathered them,
one by one, and thanked the man who stopped to help.
That was the moment my wings remembered weight.
I started finding reasons to be near.
The coffee shop where you read.
The bus at 7:12.
The park bench that catches the last light.
I learned the shape of your name when you whispered it to a dog.
I am not supposed to want.
I was cast out for it.
But you make wanting feel holy again.
So I fall a second time, and this time it’s by choice.
Not from heaven. Into you.
Into the way you hum when you cook.
Into the scar on your knuckle.
Into the night you stayed up with me when the rain wouldn’t stop.
If this is a sin, let it be mine.
If this is grace, let it find me here, on earth,
with dirty shoes and a heart that finally learned how to beat.
I was an angel.
I fell.
And in falling, I learned how to love.
