Steampunk Dragonflies

You'll find my family flying,
the sun mosaic-ing off stained-glass wings
and burnished copper,
deep in the forest where mushroom cities sprawl
and skittish deer wait out the changing seasons.

The ancient aunts groom my Unca Bob's antennae
as they talk stories of our legacy.

"We was made inna cottage
at the far tips of the highest mountain
to a woodsman's calloused hands,"
they always begin
and the tight curly-cue of my wings
settle into silence.

"Him was a giant
in the middle of cold metal sidewalks
and strange flickering daylight;
tha on'y man left 
and born with a secret to share."

It's always around now
Aunt Abner lets out a choked snore
and the other two forget that we're listening, quiet.

The woodsman was a healer-type, 
they used to tell it,
though they've never agreed
if he was always fixing those too lost to find themselves
or finding himself too lost to fix.

The silence never lasts long;
the forest will shrug a tree into falling,
a swallow will swoop in 
and break its beak trying to eat us,
and I'll pick up the unraveled threads of history
and move on because we all know how it ends.

The woodsman found a city girl,
taught her how to find life buried in poison oak and fallen leaves,
brought her home and kept her like a pet.

We grew dusty and time-worn in the years that passed,
left strewn across his metal city like debris to rot.

We fell apart and fell away into ourselves.

"The tinker came
long into the darkness,
his google-eyes like insects
while he pieced us back together
from salvaged, scavenged parts."

Just enough for one,
though the personalities came attached--
a unique soul built from many
flown away and forgotten.

When I finish piecing the threads together,
the aunts are arguing over which we were--
lost and fixed, or found and broken.

A mosquito hovers, humming, overhead;
the forest breathes on around us.

My family flies together, see,
metal wing joints creaking, 
predators vying for meat we'll never have,
moving as one, though always apart in opinions.

I guess we're waiting, too--