Contributor: Catherine Zickgraf

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The world is tucked in.
The houses sigh heavy in sleep.
The stars sprinkle down—
on the carpeted forest,
you lay on the ground.

Your back against the earth.
The night births a liberty,
releasing me to search for you,
so I can search your eyes.
Do you feel me fly above the tree line?

Between the branch heights and moon fog,
I open my wings of sleeves,
unpin my hair in streams.
In the air like the ocean
I sway in the waves.
Through clouds like lace,
the starlight rains.

And I see all the sounds in the trees,
how their notes grow and drown
in the midnight sea.
And your eyes glow somewhere like sapphires,
while the fires of all the longing hearts
blow tonight around the roof spires.

I feel you, can’t find you, I smell your smell.
But the hell of this longing I hold every night.
In the light under my eyelids,
you live in my reach.
But my heart can’t even reach over the earth—
I don’t know where you live anymore.

That day at the door,
like waves on the eroding shore,
we pulled apart our fingers for the last time.
This is your last rhyme, I can't suffer anymore.


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Catherine Zickgraf has performed her poetry in Madrid, San Juan, and three dozen other cities. Her new chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published through Aldrich Press and is available on Amazon.com.