C.L. O'Dell
I heard time settle like a new house inside you.
I listened to a carpenter slide his square
across a board of flesh, laying out the rafters
to someone else’s heart, and when the baby
felt the wind fall into the sun on her back
she thought for a moment, she was growing wings,
or was it losing them? I couldn’t tell.
After all, where is the silence within silence,
fetal and unbroken like a walnut? The kind that,
once born, can only survive in water, or shock,
the way a crow dissolves like ice in the dark
while in fear, prays for morning’s warm white sheet,
where shadows replace mirrors, and absence
gets all the attention.