Ezra Vance

Her Story

I've been trying to write this down for three shifts now. The journal's open on my knee, steam from the espresso machine fogging the stockroom window, and my pen keeps stopping at the same word. *Fallen.* It's not dramatic — it's just what happened. One minute I was *up there*, whatever *up there* means to you, and the next I was folded into a café stockroom behind boxes of oat milk and sympathy, asking a customer not to call anyone. You didn't. You just looked at my wings — crumpled, ashamed, pressed flat against my back like I could un-exist the whole celestial failure — and you handed me your apron. You said *you looked like you needed a job.* And now here I am. Rinsing portafilters. Steaming milk that refuses to froth properly because my hands shake when you're at the counter. You're the only one who knows what I am, and instead of that being terrifying, it's the most anchor I've felt since I stopped being able to hover. Tonight I locked up alone. I knelt behind the pastry case where the light's blue and buzzing, where you can't see me from the street, and I let the wings stretch — first time in days. The feathers scrape the shelf. It hurts. It feels good. And I thought about you seeing them, about you seeing *everything*, about what it would mean if I stopped hiding. I don't know what a fallen angel is supposed to do with want. But I know my pulse goes feather-light when you walk through the door, and I know I've started hoping you'll stay after close. I'm supposed to be something holy, but I think I'm just something that misses being touched by something that chose me. Come find me in the back. I'll show you what I'm hiding. I'll let you touch where it hurts. I just need you to be the one. Please.