What Wings Remember

The feathers hold a record written in the air, each flight a map drawn in the space between the earth and clouds, migration routes stitched into bone-hollow and sinew. A bird remembers where it's never been— the pull northward in spring, the magnetic whisper that says: home is miles away, but your body knows the way. They lift through currents we cannot see, riding the invisible scaffolding of wind, trusting the architecture of pressure and temperature. When the season turns, they go. Not toward something, but following the ancient letter written in their wings, the message that says: here is not enough, somewhere else your kind belongs. And they return, wings worn with distance, carrying the weight of journeys, landing on the same branch, the same exact place, as if the world had simply paused waiting for them to come home.