a shard of bird song

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The dipping sun felt like fucking heaven

on my bitter-soaked tongue.


Our post-midnight talks now fall asleep 

with the used tea bags; their youth shreds its 

moon-rinsed colored skin in the autumn air.

We sip Sherry from the thin ceramic mugs

your Mum gifted us on our first anniversary.

Our shadows grow in the dim light; our

lungs stretch in the cigar smoke, burning

away the thick silence.


A shard of the moon is near the leg of my

chair, half-dead, lying on its stomach. 

Blood pools around my bare feet, but we're

too drunk to look into it. There's a hum of 

silence buzzing in our ears; like that bird song 

buried deep inside the creaked floorboards.


We kiss till my lips tingle in numbness,

under the clouds as the moon burns in the air.

The city lights look like pixie lights through

the mist, a mosaic of cracks, in the blues.

The last remains of our splintered lives drown

underwater, our poetry fading with the smoke.

You're moving to Florida tomorrow, and my

winters will be forever cold in Portland bonfires.


We ate pomegranate in the back of your car.

You were humming to some Lifehouse song, but

I could only hear the occasional "everything."

Your sister was talking about her new boyfriend,

often fake gagging at us making love eyes; but

I knew she loved seeing you happy anyway.


Orange summers, crashing ocean blues.

Stale wine conversations and dancing in

the refrigerator light—our moss-covered 

secrets lay bare on the shoreline.

Fairy lights, stolen kisses;

A fight broke out in the elevator.

The black edges in your peripheral vision.


I saw us in my dream, standing at the altar.

There's the aquamarine ring on the wrong finger.

A broken wine glass lies somewhere in one 

corner of the room, and a red stain grows on 

my best friend's sister's expensive gown.

Was I crying or was that the way I smiled goofily?

We were in a sea of faceless strangers in white.

But I could still close my eyes and see you looking at me.


Dried carnations, half-bloomed roses.

We dread the "this's it" in the dark room.

The bird song sleeps in peace in the darkness.

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