On the walk home, shadowed
by smeary Christmas
lights lining row homes,
I stared at the parade
of songbirds
flying into warmth.
And tripped,
scraping my knee
on the past, space you occupy
when the trees were still
full of birds,
when sweat slid behind our shirts,
when the sneakers
flung over the cables
started splitting by their laces,
unable to carry each other’s weight,
when we looked up, into the
Sun, and saw the beginning of
Freedom
or something
worse. Now, I feel
heat drip down my
leg,
bleeding underneath
sparrows who don’t know the
difference between warmth and
weight.
Matilda Stolte is a storyteller and poet. She recently graduated from Franklin & Marshall College with an English-Creative Writing major and a Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies minor. Her work appeared in boy-band magazine, the literary magazine at her alma mater. She is hoping to attend a MFA program next fall.