Talons, sharp and keratinous, stretch 
toward me, inescapable in their descent. 

They puncture the thin skin
spread across my shoulder blades

as if to encourage wings of my own
to sprout from the bone. When they don’t,

this vulture, this stork of Hades,
carries me up and through the wind, 

navigating currents and eddies of air 
to the other side, beyond mortal men,

its own wings laboring to deliver me
to a nest at the top of a tree—

not to hungry mouths waiting to feed,
not to progeny praying for their next meal,

but instead, to a vast plain of bone, picked
clean and ready to be used. Its beak

like a scalpel grafts skeleton to my back,
carving carpals and phalanges to my scapulae.

Still sore, this bird of prey prompts me to the edge
of death, and flexing my newly formed appendages,

I am ready to fly above the earth,
to soar above the life that used to be mine.