murder

by Liz Pino Sparks

You said once, if someone could get a

murder of crows

into your backyard, you would

never leave. I thought then

when it came time, to ask you to

never leave, I would summon a

murder of crows to our backyard. Which 

is a bit, redundant, as, even besot 

in our first hours, I wanted to beg you to

never leave. Wrapped in you, in you,

in a night, eternal in its desperation

for permanence, I trace my finger

along my forearm, where I will tattoo 

a crow, someday, for you. For you. Where

I will trace my finger, around your

finger, around your vena amoris, around

the mythical line to mirror our mythical

love that some mythical god laid at our

unworthy feet, in a mythos of us, where

I would follow you into an underworld,

any circle of hell, any treacherous desert

of an endless and cruel summer. And each

would be beyond my periphery, because 

there you stand straight ahead, fixed, in my

sight. In an open yard, in the first chill of

harvest, you, stilled, amidst a murder    of crows.

Liz Pino Sparks is a writer, musician, legal scholar, and teacher. Their chapbook, Generic American Household, is available now from boats against the current.