A nearly full moon,
white disk on black and
lilac smudged sky; alone.
Stars snuffed out in cloud pockets.
Wind jostles thorn-crowned
thistles, skinny weeds dancing.
I watch from the window,
an ache in the bowl of my belly,
its dull fog whirling.
Sharper now, slicing meat.
A curled mammal clawing,
crawls to the pit of my shoulders,
gnawing bone branches.
I wish I would die, I say,
let it be wings tearing
flesh into feathers to fly me.
Crimson riverbanks burst,
cranberry clots on cotton,
a reservoir of blood.
Everything silver and
bleached, clean.
Do you want to keep it
are words not being said,
but ectopic, not viable,
and in the wrong place, are.
I am not asked that question.
Little flower unfurling,
you can’t grow there.
Jessica Popeski is a Classical Voice and Creative Writing graduate from Brandon University. Her poetry has been exhibited at the Glen P. Sutherland Gallery of Art, and published internationally in Acta Victoriana, The Cadaverine and The Irish Literary Review. She was raised, for the most part, in Moscow, Russia, and Sheffield, England, by her mother and grandmother, and writes poetry from her apartment in Little Italy, Toronto.