I started to turn into a dragonfly while walking through Green Park. This wasn’t some sort of Kafkaesque escapade, or a bildungsroman drenched in hay-bright nostalgia, but a matter-of-fact, oh god hit the panic button scenario. The crowd, sunbathing like extras for a Monet, didn’t notice my limbs shifting. Nothing but the trees offered sympathy – their spindly arms reaching out as I tasted the new vocabulary of flight, sought out bodies of brackish water like nectar, and desired only to ride the currents. By the time I reached Buckingham Palace, I had fully transformed into a flying blow pipe, turquoise-green, with cellophane wings forming a constant X – a treasure discovering itself.

Christian Ward is a UK-based writer whose work has recently appeared in Rappahannock Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Double Speak, Wild Greens, Mad Swirl, Dipity Literary Magazine, Streetcake Magazine, among many others.