Poetry: “Leaves in the Moon,” by C.L. O’Dell

Light unfolds itself
in the dark of your veins,
in the deserted
cold of midnight

when my eyelids
jig for fish,
where skin separates
the fragile seasons.

I am asleep,
curled-up with the spiders
and a strange scent
of mold.

You’re a wet leaf hanging
in the thin belly of the moon;
I reach for the door to grab your hair
by the invisibility of it.

A sink full of applauding glass and metal
rolls my shoulder,
a dog’s rib-cage wedged
between my legs.

A flock of birds
move like thought
in the breaks of your voice,
prancing through my temple –

a shotgun blast of pellets
floating to the surface of a pond.

I moan and smear my forehead, a dying flower,
reaching for a dark hole,

wishing that you would
come and dream with me.