Arrow Breaking Apart

Jason Shinder

While lovers sleep, I dig my nails into the earth,

holding up traffic. Just now a cloud has pulled up

while I was talking to the Emptiness

of the Universe and my voice plugged into the waves

at the bottom of the ocean.

My heart is taped up like a child’s drawing

of the moon over the broken window of the sky

where the wind always comes back to fill my lungs.

I will dance on my shadow. I will open my mouth

with the air inside my mother’s coffin.

I will be the arrow breaking apart in the body

of the blackbird, which appears at my window, singing.