No Homing Pigeon
Rose Maria Woodson
Woman falling.
In love. All
balcony & balloons.
Out of love.
Plain. No tiaras, trinkets.
No slo-mo pans,
fields of sunflowers.
Vulnerable as Tell’s apple.
Spiraling the silence of sipped lattes,
at the table a little off from the crowd
by the plate glass window.
It is
a silent, painful movie:
there are no words
when your “I-love-you” is not
a homing pigeon,
doesn’t circle in the turquoise sky &
return to you waiting on the roof.
Already your lungs hammer:
Breath is nearly extinct within you.
But you pull yourself together,
the way a cloud does,
hovering, feeding on nothing solid,
gather your keys, black purse,
find your legs,
fight gravity like a prizefighter &
rise. It is
not the end of the world. It is
the end of one breathless
world.
Rose Maria Woodson: "I am the author of two chapbooks, Skin Gin (2017 winner, QuillsEdge Press) and The Ombre Of Absence (Dancing Girl Press) as well as the mini-chapbook, Dear Alfredo (Pen And Anvil Press). I hold an MA from Northwestern University."
