three a.m. touches you like an old lover’s hands:
ungentle and needing. your face is three masks
deep, your voice not your own. you know more
about the shifting winds than the ice in your eyes,
so you don’t look in mirrors anymore. the arterial
intimacy of holding someone’s death in your
hands. the bloodslick feeling of a heart stopping
like the tolling of a bell. your longing unwinds
into white ribbons spooling loose across stone.
but it’s night, and her touch is the first kindness:
coming up for air after shipwreck, the stilling
of a wound. your body is a resurrection; she’s
the grave you dug your way out of, the death-raven
with black wings that calls out a dirge.
you’ll never know where you come from. you’ll
always know what you are. you aren’t comforted
either way.
- for @7-weeks january prompt #6
