Visitor

The air is grey and spiny today, filled with billions of bright pins. There’s a thump on my window. I look out. A drab bird sits in the tree beyond. The bird reminds me of something I can’t quite place, or perhaps someone I refuse to place. Electric fog seeps inside my head and infects my brain, which crackles and zings, choked with a tingling veil. There’s a thump on my window. Tattered and spare, the bird has fallen down from a dream. I look at the bird, the bird looks at me. Light is inexorable even as it appears to waver, relentlessly lapping away at the edges of life. Careless. The bird doesn’t sing, the bird thumps on my window. I’ve known my share of shadows. Thump. I’ve known my time of sickening. Thump. Stars and starlings wheel above, though I see nothing, though the dark is closed to me. What are you, anyway? The bird peers in through the pane, eyes keen. I’m afraid to open the window.

Amee Nassrene Broumand is an Iranian American writer from the Pacific Northwest. A Best of the Net nominee and a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in numerous journals including Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), Rust + Moth, Barren Magazine, Sundog Lit, and Empty Mirror. Find her on Twitter @AmeeBroumand.