The Invention of Wings

by Sue Monk Kidd

I felt the noose of that strange and intimate exchange pull into a knot.

every girl must have ambition knocked out of her for her own good. You are unusual only in your determination to fight what is inevitable.

She’d immersed herself in forbidden privileges, yes, but mostly in the belief she was worthy of those privileges. What she’d done was not a revolt, it was a baptism.

I fall and there ain’t no wings sprouting off my shoulders.

She was trapped same as me, but she was trapped by her mind, by the minds of the people round her, not by the law. At the African church, Mr. Vesey used to say, Be careful, you can get enslaved twice, once in your body and once in your mind.