The Nebuchadnezzar magazine

The man dreams of flying in a cloud-ridden heaven, where the sky bleeds sienna and blonde. He is safe here, in this vision, amidst the dawn firmament. The vapors cannot reach him. 

When he wakes he is in his bed in a hospital room. He is roused awake by his nurse, Nicole, who touches his arm. He glimpses the flash of her face, as she holds out three coconut macaroons on a styrofoam plate. With a fork, she prods the biggest one and goads him with the treat. 

“Hungry?” 

He blinks once to signal acquiescence. She places it, tentatively, in his mouth.

Moving his tongue, he plays with the stringy texture of coconut. He tastes the fluffy mixture of egg, and chocolate. Goosebumps line his arms as he probes the tang of hope and brightness. 

The gustatory appreciation reminds him of his dream; that seventh heaven between the horizon, and a patch of star-laden sky.

He groans, appreciatively. Nicole wipes the drool from his lips. 

Most days they feed him like an infant. They bathe him, and position him on his side, away from the bed sores. 

But only on special days, do they serve the macaroons. The macaroons remind him of his mother. He remembers his mother with each bite, sees her standing with her walker inside her second story Harlem flat overlooking King’s Street. 

Down, on the street, the children yell, baying towards the harvest moon. And she laughs, joyously, with a banshee’s lament. In Harlem, the dusk-coated streets harbor sounds like the ocean-sky. He remembers her looking outside, up at the pallor of the North Star, and the seething pink of the moon.

“Done?” Nicole holds the plate closer to catch the crumbs that fall from his smacking lips.

He blinks twice. Not yet. 

He imagines, between successful swallows of the coconut, that one day that he too will walk towards King’s Street. That soon, when the cocktail of morphine, and dilaudid run their course, and his mind is clear that he too will rise and watch the North Star, and see that moon. 

One day, like a stag, he will  jump up from out of his bed. He will stand again. 

After eating the last macaroon, Nicole wipes his face, and walks out for him to rest. 

He dreams of flight again. But this time, he wears a bird’s plumage, wings as wide as a small Cessna plane. They bear him soundlessly through the night. 

Then, when gravity reigns, his wings shed, feather by feather — until the moult is complete. He falls from this high heaven, a firmament of his. This is his greatest ascent so far. He’d never been much higher, but after approaching so close to the dawn sun, he plummets down like Icarus.

Thrown down to the earth, he falls, and hits the ground, careening over the tundra’s glass-splintered frost. He lands in the Black Hills.

Then, his vision blurs, and he sees the herd and the white buffalo come to him. 

By the doctor’s reckoning, he should not have lived. Should not have been breathing.

When they come, The EMT’s grasp the linens beneath him, and hoist him. His vision blurs, and again his spirit lifts beyond his body. Outside the ambulance, he catches sight of the Hills. 

He sees a pale space, where the graying light dwindles. Again, he sees the patchwork stars, and the highest heaven.

To the temple of his body.

To the body of his house.

To such a derelict, that remains his home. 

His eyes open before the storm. Outside the snow falls like cotton down, and the lights of distant cars meander near the base of the Veteran’s hospital.

His bed is too far from the window to see ground-level; and he cannot arch his neck to fight through the strain. He cannot see down below. He can only see the spectrum of blaring reds and blues, from what he supposes is the same ambulance coming and going. 

And then, he hears a clang from outside the window. There is another thump as a bird lands on the outside window sill.

The bird lands with a clump, and ricochets from off the glass. Its body clumps upon the brick and mortar sill, to the particular angle of the man’s line of sight. It is a wren.

Slowly, snow falls. It piles upon the wren.

The man closes his eyes. He takes a breath; and expels another. offers it to the 

With a corporal might, the wren rises. Like a phoenix, it is resurrected slowly from its whitened tomb.

It hops once more and swivels its head with a pivot in one large myopic glance. Then, it ruffles its wings, and ascends off towards the next building.

The man can see the bird’s arc from outside the window. It is towards the stained glass windows of a chapel.