A Raven to Lambs
By Jane-Rebecca Cannarella
I would rather not hunt you down, and be like a raven to lambs in their little shelters. I don't want to confuse a croze for a kiss, or mistake drums filled with whiskey with the sensation that comes with sips of silky peat - raising goosebumps on my arms. Sometimes my emotions are like tickling spiders going up and down the body, and I'm full of itchy thoughts until you get home when I can plant little tickles on your hands, feet, and face. But my chapped lips are more interested in the neglected parts of you, harder to kiss. They're the rooms that your organs live in, the moving parts of a grandfather clock. If I could caress the liver, the epiglottis, the pancreas, I would like to so much more.
At night, when you fall asleep with your head resting on the stripped pillow, your hair looks like the wool of a little goat. I want to weave my fingers in the wicks, spread the filament against the flesh of my hand like palm leaves. I would count the threads of your hair instead of sheep to go to bed, imagining the living yet dead cells that make up each strand. If I could bat my lashes against the cheek of what makes up every individual morsel of your waves - I would. I'd let the consuming wings of a raven-you devour every piece of lamb-me; awake, asleep, in the little shelters of our bodies.
THE END