# The Corpse with Colored Wings A bird lies dead on the street, wings spread like a broken fan— reds and yellows bleeding into the dust. A child stops, stares. His mother pulls him forward. No one else notices. The colors don't fade with dying. If anything, they blaze brighter against the grey of concrete, the grey of forgetting. A breeze lifts one wing slightly, as if the bird might still remember flight, as if death were only a pause, a long breath before rising again. But it doesn't rise. It stays there, a small riot of color in a city that has learned to walk past beauty without breaking stride. The child looks back once. His mother's hand is firm. By tomorrow, someone will sweep it away— the body, the wings, the question burning silent in a boy's eyes. What dies when we stop looking? What lives in the space between a fallen thing and forgetting? The colored wings know. They always know.