Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Bird

Your heart is giving you trouble
again, keeping you from the indigo
rest that makes long days bearable
Maybe it's the starlight piercing
your restless eyelids. Maybe it was
the way someone spoke your name
when you weren't looking for it

There's no way but to push through
the ache, that thing caged in your chest
like a bird beating its wings against the bars
of your ribs, snapping pinion feathers and
bruising bones meant for flight

It's the pulsing wound-red heat of it
that keeps you awake at night, this night, the
bloody thumping inside you, the hunger to meet
its mate. Even muffled through the patient walls
of two bodies it will know that song, that unmistakable
call. Perhaps then you will feel it settle
for the first time, cooing like a happy pigeon