By Susanne LaBrake
Her mind travels again tonight along the path that leads down the cobbled
streets to meadows dark, where lamprocapnos bloom and bleed. Where
her body can no longer take her, and her steps no longer tread, she
passes beneath the bridge of stone, beneath that arc of dread where once
she stood held by love deep into the night, she returns alone in silence stands
in a puddle of the moon’s light. A ray, a play of brightness angled beneath
the bow, the overpass birthing shadow that forms the shape, a void as if
night is torn apart, and cleaves a path, a cut so deep, a gap so dark, and forms
the hollow that’s now her heart. The stars sit in the darkness as drops of
milk splashed carelessly on high until dawn does rise to break the night with
sun’s first flicker in the sky, and from the horizon a piercing light will rise
and dark will flee, then from deep within the breasts of birds a sound, a song,
a melody will lift, and the spirit that’s all that remains of her, in answer sings
“I am back where I belong.”