Ravens Aren’t Songbirds, and We’ll Never Meet Again
Any message well composed will ring a bell of truth; for example,
three ravens sang to us that day at the waterfall. Bad example.
A chain of emails proves that you don’t love me, and that I drove myself
insane over you—I mean, straight into you. I’m sorry. My insurance
won’t cover this. Only time will cover it. Time deletes all messages. But
those ravens still perch by that waterfall. Once, a young man
invited you to bed, and that bed cruised down a waterfall, and candles
formed a ring around it and made of its occupants a burnt offering.
These archives have been deleted by now. This man is not a man anymore,
but something prettier. Something more like you. And now,
a new man has arrived for you, with a new bed and fresh candles, and
you must have adopted a dog and bought a nice writing desk together, so
I’m sorry for driving into you again. My insanity is a sputtering time machine
that crashes straight into all my favorite landmarks. We were never
supposed to cross paths at all. Erase this message. Bury me in Potter’s Field.
Keep your dog and man and writing desk. I have ravens to feed.
Stevie Subrizi (they/she) is a genderqueer poet and rock singer-songwriter in Massachusetts. They are a former cohost of the Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab Lounge. Their chapbook Alone and Naked Inside of a Whale is the winner of the Yemassee Journal 2021 Poetry Chapbook Contest, judged by Dustin Pearson, who described its poems as “convey[ing] gravity and reality with incredible generosity and humor.” You can hear their songs at steviesubrizi.bandcamp.com.