Real Fiction
She pulled a fiction book
Off a library shelf
And settled into a plush lie
With ravens on the cover.
They snatched her up.
She was gone, never found again.
Lies are soft creatures
With talons sharper than truth.
A good book will tear you to shreds.
She fell off the edge of the last page.
This new world was strange:
Her life, but lifeless.
.
If this were a story
Who would want to read it?
Paper cuts on her heart
Never stopped bleeding,
So she pulled another book
Off a library shelf.
Art by Megan Cooke
Sunday Morning Birdsong
The Sunday morning prayers
Of songbirds on the church spire went silent
Displaced by a raven that fell
like an affliction into their midst.
There were stories tucked in its wings,
But no truth,
Just black-feathered fears
Jutting out like cursive letters.
Jagged rows of razor-soft pessimism
Depicted tragedy
With the nightmarish details
Those midnight eyes saw as certainties.
The raven spoke
Its call abrupt and final, and yet
Long after it flew away
It left something hanging in the air,
Some inverted hallelujah.
The first returning birds of faith
Struggled to compose a reply,
Each teardrop chirp
Falling short of conviction.
The spire filled with weak hope
And fluttering silence.
A single prayer struggled out
Like a forgotten melody
With missing notes,
But the song carried truth.
Their broken harmony crescendoed,
The raven omnipresent,
but outsung.
