An Inventory of Loss

It is said that when angels earn the right to visit Earth, they inhabit that which allows them to understand humans best. It is reported that the experience varies for angels, and rarely do two such heavenly creatures assume the same identity…

First came the fall. When Angel 5677 came to, he was plunged into immediate and unexplainable chaos. He was used to falling, but this differed from the usual wind beneath his wings. He couldn’t feel his wings now. In fact, he couldn’t feel his body at all. It felt as if he was trapped weightless in a glass box within someone else’s grip. There was a violent shake and he bumped against a screen. A few mental blinks later, he realised he was a string of letters. A text. “I miss you. I’m sorry.” There’s something else looming. Two hovering thumbs. Hesitation. Backspace repeatedly preferred over send. Same message retyped. Thumb now positioned over ‘send’. He hears the pilot’s commanding and interruptive voice over the intercom. The grip of passengers’ hands on armrests. The hushed prayers to evade death. The barrelling persists, partnered with spinning. The phone unceremoniously tumbles out of reach. A smashed screen. He existed as something thought but never communicated. Voices around him raised in pitch. Then, there was simply nothing.

The next time consciousness found him, 5677 had a physical form once more – only, it wasn’t his. He was soft and stuffed, but damp from a puddle he could not move from. His fixed vision, though one of his eyes had come loose, showed a blue sky intruded upon by branches. Other senses settled in. Joyful shrieks from children and squeaks from rusty hinges. 5677 was imbued with patience, as if it was his duty to wait exactly where he was left. So he watched as the clouds passed and the moon took the night shift. For someone unable to stir his sewn limbs on his own, he had to believe that he would be picked up again. Blind faith was what made the wait bearable. He recalled the laughter of a child so familiar, but the melody threatened to fade with every recollection. Slowly, more recent traces came to him. A mature voice saying “Get in the car.” Him being dropped in a hurry – carelessly, accidentally. Despite his physical form, 5677 felt more echo than solid, as if he only existed when held by a specific pair of hands, play-pretending at tea parties in a pastel room. His patience soon resigned. He became part of the earth. Equal shares loved and forgotten. If he was a memory, he hoped someone remembered.

The third time he woke, he was coddled by the warmth of a coat pocket. He was creased, as though in foetal position. Yet, they were not reckless folds; edge to edge, the owner intended for preservation. 5677 felt the shuffle of life in the pocket, felt the temperature changes as hour hands circled clocks. Now and then he’d be brushed by a hand that affirmed his existence. He could tell he mattered in a way that could bring about change, the way a butterfly’s wings could bring about a storm. On a morning that hadn’t quite committed itself, he was drawn out of the coat and unfolded. He contained a destination. A time. A platform. A way out. Fingers smoothed out his creases, as if trying to make him more real. There was the faint whistle of a train in the distance, the controlled rumbling of tracks. For just a second, it seemed fixed that the coat’s owner would validate him and board the locomotive. It was impossible for the story to play out any other way. Yet, there was no movement even as the voice over the speakers announced with urgency. The stubborn refusal to move signified a quiet farewell. As 5677 was released from between fingertips, he spiralled to the ground no thanks to the wind, no longer a hope for escape but an expired glimpse of what could have been.

The fourth iteration saw 5677 at the bottom of the blue, where it was cold and infinite. He was weighted in mass and memory, circular in a way that was absolute. There was a soft sparkle that came from him when and if the sunlight managed to pierce through. He recognised words of forever and longer carved onto his insides and was immediately engulfed by the warmth of a ring finger. He felt his metal body against the handle of a paintroller, the plastic of a baby bottle, the edge of a broken plate. He felt the skin that his body enclosed grow weak and weaker. Softly but surely, there came the sensation of teardrops on him, consequences of an untameable and long-repressed fountain. Suddenly, the warmth of the finger was rescinded and the faint pulse along with it. Where there were endless possibilities, there was now a single path to a doomed door. A final wave rushes over 5677, a mixture of admiration, guilt, yearning and grief. All of them intertwined, seemingly grown from the same roots. Rock and metal may be fused but no two souls can be.

As his visit concluded, 5677 regained his angel form and writhed in relief. So this is what it means to be human. To lose. To be lost. To bargain between the two. Every unsent message, every abandoned toy, every forsaken train, every sunken ring is not the antithesis of life but, instead, proof of it.

And, oh, the beauty in being able to lose themselves in what they call life!

Angel’s Bone is the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera-theatre work by composer Du Yun and librettist Royce Vavrek – performed by the English National Opera at Aviva Studios from 12 to 16 May 2026. Find out more here.