Night would not let me in,
without sleep, days turned grey
and empty, lying in wait
until the raven comes.
Her wings close my skull
in festered grip, her beak
breaks through the shell,
picks at the yolk of memory,
garbles up the vowels that cried
my childhood out, held my father’s death,
sucks into the crevice of her breath
the secrets I had kept,
makes vacant what is intimate.
Of a swoop, she is into flight,
the beat of feather oars slowly
break the air but leave no trace.
High above intricacies of marsh
to some unknown blackthorn
she ferries her ragged coffin,
doomed to become the grief
she so naively thieved.