Michele

“Some days they confuse the walls of their cage with their skin.”
― Traci Brimhall, Our Lady of the Ruins

“Aubade with a Broken Neck"

The first night you don’t come home
summer rains shake the clematis.
I bury the dead moth 1 found in our bed,
scratch up a rutabaga and eat it rough
with dirt. The dog finds me and presents
between his gentle teeth a twitching
nightjar. In her panic, she sings
in his mouth. He gives me her pain
like a gift, and I take it. I hear
the cries of her young, greedy with need,
expecting her return, but I don’t let her go
until I get into the house. I read
the auspices the way she flutters against
the wallpaper’s moldy roses means
all can be lost. How she skims the ceiling
means a storm approaches. You should see
her in the beginnings of her fear, rushing
at the starless window, her body a dart,
her body the arrow of longing, aimed,
as all desperate things are, to crash
not into the object of desire,
but into the darkness behind it.”
― Traci Brimhall, Rookery

“After all, what is every man? A horde of ghosts – like a Chinese nest of boxes – oaks that were acorns that were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in front – in our ancestors, back and back until...”
― Walter de la Mare, The Return

“The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave”
― Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger