Poem: "Featherfluid"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem came out of the September 5, 2023 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from mama_kestrel. It also fills the "Body" square in my 9-1-23 card for the Story Sparks Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by fuzzyred. It belongs to the series Fledgling Grace.


"Featherfluid"


When the Fledging came,
most people developed
bird feathers that matched
their human sex and gender.

Some birds, of course, looked
the same whether male or female,
but others had dramatic differences.

Some people had bird feathers of
the opposite sex, or more rarely,
divided between male and female.

Then there were those who were
neither one nor the other, and not
quite both, whose identities and
bodies shifted like liquid in a jar.

They had come to be called
many things over the years,
most recently genderfluid.

With the Fledging, some
of them developed feathers
that changed their proportions.

Here was a cardinal with feathers
mixed in red and brown, some days
more red and others more brown.

Here was a goldfinch with yellow
winking amongst the olive drab.

They were ineffable, ever-changing,
unpredictable, always in flux.

They were the featherfluid.