in parentheses

Joshua Sabatini was born in Hartford, Connecticut. In October 2002, he moved to San Francisco, California. He’s currently on retreat in Katama, Massachusetts. His 2023 published writings include “Pagodians” in Still Point Arts Quarterly, “In the Pine” in The Closed Eye Open, “The Crocus” in Daffodil Cosmic Journal, and “Ivy Anne” in Die Leere Mitte. The author can be contacted at JoshuaSabatini@gmail.com.

J. Sabatini has previously been featured in the Summer 2023 issue of In Parentheses.

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The Winged

         Percy sat cross-legged in the sunshine on the soft brown lawn smoking a pre-roll Julia and Mercy handed him after they returned from their 11 a.m. run to the cannabis dispensary. The decades-old, well-worn bicycles they rode there and back rested on the ground nearby the porch, on which Mercy sat in a thick wooden chair reading aloud Attar’s Conference of the Birds, which she picked up along the way at the public library. She paused to ask Percy if he was paying attention. He had dozed off. Julia was on the porch too, finishing a painting of old shell-fishers.

         Later in the day, Percy visited Stella, the baker.

         “You’re just in time for a fresh batch,” she said by the outdoor stone stove.

She placed a fresh loaf of bread on a gray stone disk and with a long knife sliced the bread.

“See how it is,” she said.

Percy ate a warm bread slice carefully and, after he put the last bite into his mouth, told her it was delicious.

“I had a dream I was aimlessly flying. What should I do?” he asked.

She poured Percy a glass of water and set it down before him. He picked it up and drank it.

“You need to study the flight of the red-tailed hawk,” she said.

At the furthest point west, he sat cross-legged and began to meditate using the OM chant; the sound soon permeated everything, and when he ceased chanting and still heard it reverberating, he knew he had done well. He stripped bare, walked awkwardly across the rocks and swam out into the gentle sea. When he stepped from out of the salty water, he was instantly greeted by the warmth of the sun. He heard a cry in the sky and looked up. There was a red-tailed hawk in mid-flight. He sat down on the spot where he had meditated, where gray clay mixed with sands forming a firm bed, and he looked at the rock in the sea eternally crowned in white pelican dung. Percy reclined and closed his eyes; in the goldenness the hawk appeared with the Eye of Horus. He wondered if Stella, too, had the hawk living within her.

He thought about how the sunset would be on this particular day. They were all unique, no lesser or greater than the other. He dressed and began to walk back, preferring to exit the beach at the start of twilight. There were days when the sun would simply go down, turn the horizon a vermillion, and the blueness would turn to grayness. There were other days when the display of colors would astonish him, the whole sky painted in a golden red, full of glorious structures.

The sun was at its mid-way point from where he had last seen it; there was no slowing it down. The sky had yet to change hue, but it would soon. He came to a large boulder by the sea and placed the palm of his hand upon it. It felt alive to him and he heard the sound of the island’s true name spoken. The sky was changing, both near and far. He continued to walk. A light breeze stirred from off the waters. A crimson band ran straight across the western sky. Percy stood still to observe the world around him continue to transform, taking on a reddish-orangish hue. The light bounced off the cliffs and painted the sea in a variety of colors. He thought that the sunset – any of them – had wisdom in it ready for the taking.

He stood at the shoreline, just out of reach of the incoming gentle waves, and let the winds like breath from across the waters wash over him, imitating the birds he saw standing on the shore or on a boulder with their prayer-like tranquility observing the sunset. He looked into the breath, what he felt all over, moved his shoulders, widened his arms subtly to fill up with more of it. His forearms took on a reddish hue, reflecting the light. By extending his arms, he felt like a bird about to leap up into the winds and take flight. His arms could become the wings or they could come from out of his shoulders.

Percy and his glorious red wings, catching the winds of creation flowing in from across the sea, calling him to their source, out there. He stood there in a strange delight, immersed in his winged self; they felt natural to him, as if he had them always. He realized he had struggled in his dream for failure to appreciate his true nature, but it had now awoken in him and he knew it instantly. He felt as if he were a tadpole having vague dreams of being a frog but incapable of fully realizing he would become a frog. But now he knew.

Percy headed back to the other side of the island. He shouted for Julia and Mercy as he ran up the stairs. He found them together on the deck illuminated by the glow of the waxing moon rising in the east near Jupiter, and, to his amazement, he saw they were winged too.

“Oh, you were listening!” Mercy said.

“Wings of the soul,” Percy said in a whisper.

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