Flight of the Monarch
Eclosion
The shell splits.
A crack, a tear, a shudder.
She rips herself out of the green cocoon, slick and trembling, two legs still numb, wings sagging like soft leaves in the rain. She dangles, upside down, breathless. The sun is blinding and hot against her wet body. Wind tugs at her like a child’s hand. Below, the air smells of dust and sap. Above, there is only motion and light and pull—something ancient.
Something north.
A vibration. A shadow. Then impact.
The branch jerks. A burst of feathers, beak, wind. Her sibling is gone in an instant. No cry. No time. Just a puff of warm dust, and one papery wing floating past her face like a petal torn from a bloom.
The scent of blood and resin hits her.
She lets go.
Falls.
The wind roars in her ears—an ocean of invisible violence.
It lifts her just before the ground.
She flutters.
Unsteady. New.
Her wings catch air like torn flags, flapping wrong, correcting, jolting. Every movement feels like flying with broken glass. Below her, hot rock and thorn scrub flash by. The light stings her eyes. The air is thick with pollen and ozone and heat.
She crashes into a zinnia and clings to it, legs sinking into fuzz. Her abdomen aches. Her proboscis uncoils, tasting sweetness—liquid sun. She drinks, trembling.
A flicker in the corner of her eye.
The jay circles overhead, tail slicing the sky.
She lifts off.
Now.
Three Days North
She finds others: orange pulses in the air above a cornfield, their wings flashing in time with hers. A silent rhythm, ancient, older than memory.
She draws close to one—larger, strong, with a scent like crushed citrus. He brushes her wing. Not love, not language—just motion.
The warmth of company.
Then boom.
The air splits.
A hawk dives—hungry.
Not for them—for the vole below. But as it pulls up, its wing cuts through the air beneath them.
A wall of wind.
She’s thrown upward. Others aren’t.
She watches one slam into a cornstalk—folded mid-flight like a paper toy.
A dull thud.
Pollen bursts into the air like smoke.
She climbs until her wings ache.
Thunder
She smells it before she sees it—metallic and wrong, like copper in her throat. The sky boils black. The wind twists in circles. Dead leaves lift from the ground and spiral upward.
She dives.
A branch. Anything.
The wind slams her against a mesh screen. Her wing creaks. She bounces—gutter, glass, brick. Feels the cold bite of aluminum against her legs. Pain spikes down her side.
Then—a gap.
She flutters downward, lands in the crevice of a plastic chair. The world roars around her. Rain falls in thick, angry drops. Each one thuds like a hammer on the chair above her.
She doesn’t move.
She endures.
Morning
The sky tastes washed. Worms and rotted leaves. Her legs ache. Her wing is stiff but unbroken.
She drags herself onto a dandelion, sunlight warming her joints.
She drinks.
Another joins her.
Then another.
Buzzing laughter. A small human.
A jar, cloudy and wide, slams down.
Glass hums. Steel rim glints.
One monarch is caught instantly—crumpled beneath the glass. Another ricochets off the rim, skims away.
She launches.
The jar clips her wing. Sharp. Tearing.
She spins sideways and crashes into a bush.
Her wing flutters wrong—lopsided now. A soft, papery piece is missing.
She flies again anyway.
Texas
Heat presses down like a fist.
The scent of tar and gasoline coats her tongue. She flies low, skimming just above the shimmer of blacktop. Her wings drag heat with every beat.
A semi roars past.
The blast of air hurls her into the ditch. Weeds, grit, sharp grass slap her face.
Then—movement.
Green.
Still.
A mantis.
He leans toward her, eyes like beads. Slow. Hungry.
She stiffens. Her wings twitch.
He steps.
She grabs a dry burr in her legs and flings it, all strength and panic.
It hits his eye.
He recoils.
She launches, flapping hard, crooked, gasping for altitude.
Blood seeps from her torn leg.
She doesn’t stop.
Night
A milkweed field, quiet as breath.
She lands on a leaf, wings sagging, body hollow. The nectar tastes sweet, familiar, fleeting.
She lays.
One egg. Then two. Then three.
Tiny pale beads that smell like the future.
At midnight, they come—black ants, silent, organized, fast. Their pincers gleam.
They climb the stalk.
One egg vanishes in their jaws.
She lashes out, legs flailing. Kicks one free. Another falls. They retreat—but not far.
She coils her body around the remaining eggs.
And does not sleep.
Kansas
Afternoon haze, cicadas screaming.
A white fence. A patch of milkweed.
She descends.
Soft scent. Cool shade. Flowers trembling in wind.
A paw blurs into her side.
She doesn’t see the cat until it’s on her. Its fur smells of dust and mice. Breath hot and sour.
Its teeth catch her wing. Pressure—crease, not tear. The crackle of tension.
She thrashes. Jams a hooked leg into its eyelid.
It hisses, swats.
She flutters backward. One wing flaps weakly, still attached but stiff.
She dives behind a rake. Clings to the wooden handle, heart hammering.
The cat yawns, uninterested.
She waits until dawn.
Ontario
Smoke in the air—pine and ash. Wind smells like coming winter.
She climbs a fencepost. Every step a shudder. The wood tastes dry. Her legs barely hold.
Then—she sees them.
Trees. Massive. Branches bowed under black and orange wings.
Not shadows.
Monarchs.
Thousands of them, still as death, clinging to bark like prayer beads. The air pulses with wingbeat and silence.
She flies.
The wind is against her.
She climbs anyway.
Halfway up, a gust knocks her sideways. She slams into the tree trunk, tumbles.
Bark scrapes her belly. Her legs catch a groove.
She climbs.
A foot at a time.
She reaches.
A branch. Her branch.
She lunges.
A shadow lands beside her.
Robin.
He tilts his head. One black eye. Beak twitching.
She freezes.
He watches.
Then lifts away on the wind.
She pulls herself onto the branch.
Her body broken, her wings tattered, one leg dragging behind her.
But she made it.
She lays.
Each egg a breath. A battle cry. A soft and perfect seed.
She closes her wings. Her body curls into stillness.
The branch creaks in the breeze.
Somewhere far below, the wind whispers of roads and rain and the jaws of a cat.
But none of that matters now.
She did not fly to live.
She lived to fly.
And she won.
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