I can’t write you because everything’s wrong. Before dawn, crows swim from the cedars: black coffee calls them down, its bitter taste in my throat as they circle, raucous, huge. Questions with no place to land, they cruise yellow air above crickets snapping like struck matches. My house on fire, crows are the smoke. You’ve never left me. When you crossed the river you did not call my name. I stood in tall grass a long time, listening to birds hidden in reeds, their intricate songs. The grass will burn, the wrens, the river and the rain that falls on it. I can go nowhere else: everything I cannot bear is here. I must listen deeper. Sharpen my knife. Something has changed the angles of trees, their color. Do not wait to hear from me. I cannot write to you because this is what I will say.
From Slow Fire by Pamela Alexander. Copyright © 2007 by Pamela Alexander. Reprinted with permission of Ausable Press.