-- shall become as --

            you put this pen
in my hand and you
take the pen from
            my hand. the night
before the full moon

the moon seems
full. what is missing
is a dark hungry
            sickle, the sliver
of shadow eating

            us up inside. after
the mountains breathe
their mint-and-sorrow
            green against the long
summer sky, they burst

            into hot october
laughter, lighting
the horizon with citrus,
            rust, and blood. you
put this knife in my

            hand, we pull. we
meet as oceans come
together, heaving
            against and clinging
across our salt watery

            boundary. we approach
endlessly, like two rails
of one track, tied
            in parallel that
promises our eyes to

            merge, someplace far
off in the distance. you
put this feather in my
            palm. my fingers
close around flight.


---Evie Shockley

a half-red sea, (Carolina Wren Press)