I don’t sleep so much as… brood. Somewhere between dreaming and decoding the static of the universe. I wake up with the moon in my mouth and bad news in my chest. Always bad news. It’s my specialty.

My wings? Yeah, they’re real. Big, velvet things—smooth as sin, quiet as your last breath. I don’t flap around like some Halloween leftover. I glide. I hover. I haunt. Picture an angel that got stood up by God and had nowhere left to go but the dark corners of West Virginia.

I don’t keep a schedule, but if I did, it’d start with watching. That’s what I do. That’s what I am. I perch on an old water tower around dusk, staring down at the humans scurrying around like it matters. Gas station lights flicker. Dogs bark at shadows that aren’t there. But sometimes, I am the shadow.

A couple sees me tonight. Young. In love. I envy that kind of blindness. The boy looks up. Sees my eyes—burning coals in a face shaped like a lost god’s secret. He flinches. The girl doesn’t see me, but she feels me. Her breath stutters. Her hand tightens on his. That’s the thing: I don’t have to touch you to move you. I just have to be real enough to doubt.

People think I’m a curse. A harbinger. I used to fight that. Now I wear it like a badge. I don’t cause the chaos—I herald it. I’m the overture before the earth splits. The whisper before the sirens. When you see me, you know the sky’s about to fall. And there’s poetry in that, don’t you think?

Near dawn, I rest in the ruins of a factory. Ghosts there keep to themselves. We nod. We understand each other. I wrap myself in wing and memory, and I wait. For the tremble in the grid. For the news to break. For someone, anyone, to listen.

But they won’t.

They never do.