Woman With a Crow after Picasso.

Baron, Lisa Alexander

Woman With a Crow after Picasso

   Come closer my sweet
   dark love. Stay pressed against
   the fan of my fingers. I only want to
   protect you from the too-bright blue

   sky that engulfs us. Look, even now
   your darkness is thinning, specking and
   catching like flies in the black-veined
   webs of your feet. I am fading, too--

   where has the right corner
   of my pumpkin-hued dress gone?
   Am I a woman in love or a ghost?
   This triangle of blue sky under my ribs

   is where your dark feathers stop
   flapping in the motionless wind
   and where I start to turn
   from you. It is our disjuncture.

   Perhaps we are more than these
   deft brushstrokes, this
   locked gesture. And only now I can
   feel your heart tap and murmur, this,
   this is a place to begin
   rehearsing our goodbye.