on guardian angels

guardian angels who are young and green and uncertain, in over their head from the moment of their charge is born (all that screaming and blood and yet the mother smiles through her tears, kisses the forehead of the small, squalling thing and they don't understand but they feel the flaring of a new-born soul, and there is something there, something sensed slantwise and true)

guardian angels whose hearts leap into their throats when this infant falls asleep against the curve of their palm, when it grabs at their fingers and burbles happy noises that mean foodlovehomesafe. (it will never occur to these angels, so green and new, that they are partly responsible for the love-longing that humanity chases all its life) Guardian angels who rock their infant humans in their arms, whispering stories of earth's early seas and distant supernovas and the antics of their brothers, letting the child gum at the sleeve of their robe.

guardian angels who fall in love, transcendentally and hopelessly--learning to bruise, to have their hearts broken; learning to ride a bike and fall and get up again (no one ever taught angels how to rise.) guardian angels standing, stiff and uncertain, in bedrooms as their charges cry bitterly, uncertain how to apologize for the world they still do not understand, may never understand.

(guardian angels at hospital beds guardian angels in operating theaters guardian angels in warzones and beside car accidents and no longer green or new but uncertain, always uncertain, their transcendental hopeless love splintering in their chests)

because guardian angels cannot always protect you from the world (these are the terms of the contract--humanity wanted free will) but they can shadow your footsteps and wrap you in the brightness of their wings, praying that this is enough.

(guardian angels are not young, or green, or uncertain when they have lived a lifetime at someone's side--the loving transmutes all to gold.)

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Perfect, invisible guardian angels who have strict rules about interfering with humanity's free will, about staying hidden and fighting on the secret battlefields of the soul--guardian angels who have nothing for millennia but their love for people who don’t know they're there.

guardian angels who, through some accident, suddenly find themselves corporeal, and staring down their latest charge.

and being real, being treated like you're a person in the world, fucks you up. Humanity fucks up everything it touches and angels most of all because you can only cling to your perfectly logical policy of nonintervention and respect for free will when these are people who haven't smiled at you.

it's suddenly all questions, and people waiting for your answers, and not just trying to understand social mores as a detached observer but remembering to perform them yourself. Because people watch you now. They judge you. You! And they are very small and fragile but they don't see it, they've got universes inside their heads and they dare, they're convinced they're the world entire. After a while in their company, you're not sure they aren't.

and then one day, you meet that rock, that choice, between using your terrible power to--well, the act itself doesn't matter, it's the interference that matters, it's the potential you have to bend the natural order, change it. Maybe someone's dying, and you could heal them with a word. Maybe someone's lost and you could find them in minutes. Maybe someone's grieving and you could take it away, give them what they desire. The world is terrible to humanity, you've learned that--really learned it, in a way that's different than merely knowing it. (It's worse when you're there, when you're real, and they're sobbing into your shoulder.)

so you've got this choice, between what you were and what you're becoming, and it's terrible but it's true, and that's how humanity gets to you. They make you be.