Aubade with Ravens
by Jessica Lynn Suchon
(published in Pinch, Fall 2019)
When you sleep, the moon plucks hurt from my palm
like a loose thread, unravels
skin and leaves a skeleton of iron in your bed. I dream silver-
veined marble basins filled
with cream. I dream the ravens that bathe there, the scream
of wings as white spatters
from feathers and freckles the sky with constellations.
Morning reminds me how closely we sleep
and when you reach for me,
already awake and wanting, I stay
curled away from your chest. I want to tell you
I loved a man who beat me bloody and he left me
scared of everything. Listen,
I am trying to warn you
how my body cannot be trusted, that pain takes
strange forms. Any light I swallow leaves just as—
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