Real Fiction

She pulled a fiction book

Off a library shelf

And settled into a plush lie

With ravens on the cover.

They snatched her up.

She was gone, never found again.

Lies are soft creatures

With talons sharper than truth.

A good book will tear you to shreds.

She fell off the edge of the last page.

This new world was strange:

Her life, but lifeless.

.

If this were a story

Who would want to read it?

Paper cuts on her heart

Never stopped bleeding,

So she pulled another book

Off a library shelf.

Art by Megan Cooke

Sunday Morning Birdsong

The Sunday morning prayers

Of songbirds on the church spire went silent

Displaced by a raven that fell

like an affliction into their midst.

There were stories tucked in its wings,

But no truth,

Just black-feathered fears

Jutting out like cursive letters.

Jagged rows of razor-soft pessimism

Depicted tragedy

With the nightmarish details

Those midnight eyes saw as certainties.

The raven spoke

Its call abrupt and final, and yet

Long after it flew away

It left something hanging in the air,

Some inverted hallelujah.

The first returning birds of faith

Struggled to compose a reply,

Each teardrop chirp

Falling short of conviction.

The spire filled with weak hope

And fluttering silence.

A single prayer struggled out

Like a forgotten melody

With missing notes,

But the song carried truth.

Their broken harmony crescendoed,

The raven omnipresent,

but outsung.