Sarah Mills
I’m sitting by the window with my coffee wondering about the invention of kissing when rain starts falling in a way I don’t think rain is supposed to fall // sideways & then ricocheting back up to the sky the sump pump is making that slurping-noodle-soup sound & now I’m thinking about starlings those passerine birds with iridescent plumage mimicking the sounds of car alarms as if flying is an emergency I always imagine the rain never ending how it might decide it loves sliding down a car window two lovers inside, kissing the moon rising like acid in the dark-throated night oh how the rain might say I’m finished with the sky the clouds pressing down like hands over my mouth now I’m floating on the blue couch in my therapist’s office listening to the starlings cry their tears falling down my cheek water pooling over cracked asphalt another way to feel broken I have lit sadness like a paper boat let it singe my fingers only to inhale its ashes pretending not to hear the strained singing of shattered glass & my question for you, therapist, is if a mirror falls in my bedroom & no one hears it who will brush the glass from my hair?
#
Sarah Mills is a Pushcart-nominated poet whose poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in HAD, Gone Lawn, Identity Theory, Rust & Moth, The Shore, Unbroken, SoFloPoJo, Beaver Mag, MoonPark Review, and elsewhere. She is online at sarahmillswrites.com and on Bluesky @sarahmillswrites.