O, wanderer. Lost in honeysuckled dream vined sweetly ‘round wrists, half truths hard thumbed against eyelids, shadows lodged in thy white throat, & tongue embittered. Complicity of sleep & dreaming. Abrupt awakening to a world never gentler than it is or was or will be. Wings plucked & fallen. Heart bruised. Soul starved. Arrive at last, in full embrace.

Cracked open.

— C.Birde, 6/20