There were six feathers.

Not enough for balance.
Not enough for sky.
But enough to remember falling.

Each one grown through ache.
Each one earned, not given.
Each one a sentence from a chapter no one finished reading.

The bird spirals downward.

Not toward earth —
but toward that shifting layer of mind
where memories become myth
and myth forgets it was once real.

Its descent is not chaotic.
It is ritual.

A playground creaks in the dream of a woman who never had children.
Wind lifts an empty swing.
A voice — her own, younger — says:
“Birds don’t fall. They just forget to flap sometimes.”

No one hears her.
But the memory does.
And it folds the sentence
into a feather.

In a house with no clocks,
a photograph lies face down.

Turn it over and you’ll find a child
sitting beside a cake with six candles.
Only five are lit.

No one noticed that night.
But the memory did.
And it burned.

The fall continues.
But gravity is not the force.
Recognition is.

It lands — not physically,
but within an old man’s unfinished story.

A rooftop. Broken tiles.
Shouting. Rain.
A name that no one owned,
but everyone bled when it was spoken.

Then: something breaks.

A woman drops a glass in a kitchen that isn’t hers.
Water pools like a question.
She whispers:
“There were six of us, once.”

The bird hears it.
Flinches.
And for a moment, has weight.

This is not a chapter of flight.
This is the chapter of falling with intent.

Where downward means inward.
Where speed is truth.
Where loss gathers shape.

Six feathers.
A nearly-formed wing.
No lift yet.
But momentum.
And memory.

And beneath the bird, the sky begins to rise.