the bearded lady

Nights she’d go flying in her tin pyjamas, flapping her arms and kicking her feet, a clanking metal fish in the blue night sky. Her aeroplane dreams were long hauls over the icing-topped world to the Far East, to the pulsing electric seas of Taiwan. Here were spare parts and wiring, robotic buffers, machines that stripped the pyjamas down and fixed them with shiny new rivets at the seams. A long time ago she had flown in bright feathers like a bird, tame, and trusting every hand that called her down from the sky. A small bird’s wings can be broken with one quick snap. Girls need armour.