After “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid

Practice your aerial drills Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, even if it’s raining—you think you’ll never have to fly in the rain?; do calisthenics and sword drills on Tuesdays and Fridays; don’t fly bare-winged into a thunderstorm’s static; cook your crag deer steak just til they’re hot-brown outside and warm-red in; soak your hunting clothes right after you take them off; blood draws blood; never pinion your own fool self with your own clothes; memorize the width of your wing protrusion points; salt your extra meat and hide it; is it true you were letting the Wingless into the crags on Sunday?; always eat your food like you know where your next meal’s coming from; if you didn’t hunt the deer yourself, cook it until it’s hot-brown all through; on Sundays, walk strong like your training’s made you, not like you can barely hold your wings up; don’t let strangers into the crags; don’t speak to the Wingless, not even to give directions; all of this is their fault; drop a little food when you walk because crag mice will follow you and they make good snacks; I never bring strangers into the crags, only my friends, and never on training days; this is how to clean a wound; this is how to suture the wound you just cleaned; this is how you widen and hem the holes in your shirts so you don’t pinion your own fool self with your own clothes; this is how you guard your wingmate’s back without getting tangled; this is how you guard your wingmate’s underside without getting tangled; this is how you gut the crag deer—far from your nest because blood draws blood and fresh meat draws false friends; when you attack from above, don’t get fancy and spin or else you’ll get vertigo and lose your sword; this is how you choose a gender; this is how you cast one off; this is how you mark your own nest; this is how you mark the borders of the crags; this is how you hold your wings near someone you don’t like too much; this is how you hold your wings near someone you don’t like at all; this is how you hold your wings near someone you like completely; this is how you set up camp as a scout; this is how you set up camp as a wingsquad; this is how you set up camp for someone who outranks you; this is how you set up camp before a fight; this is how you set up camp after a fight; this is how to hold your wings in the presence of the Wingless, like your training’s made you strong enough to drop them off the crags like they deserve; sun your wings everyday so that you don’t get mites or wingrot; don’t climb everywhere—you’re not Wingless, you know; don’t pick the crag flowers—the bees might come back; don’t throw stones at crag birds because they’ve been gone for decades and we want them to come back; this is how to make a nest; this is how to line a nest; this is how to make medicine for wingrot; this is how to make medicine to throw away a fledge before it becomes a fledge, and don’t tell me you won’t need it—we learn things that help other people, too, you know; this is how to catch a fish from the air; this is how to throw back the perfect fish so that the crag birds have food when they come back to us; this is what Wingless gunpowder smells like; this is how to bully the Wingless; this is how the Wingless bully you; this is how to choose a nestmate; this is how to love a nestmate and this is how to touch their wings; this is how to do an aerobatic loop if you feel like it and this is how to steady yourself so you don’t get vertigo; this is how to stretch crag deer meat through lean summers and leaner winters; this is how you dispose of bodies you can’t eat; but what if my nestmate has no wings? You mean to say that after all that you are really going to be the kind of person who won’t lift them up with your own wings?