I’m not ungrateful, understand.
Your hands were gentle, I trusted you,
my shattered wing a certain death
in winter fog. Tonight again you move
across my skin, our white lake, riddled
with hungers. What’s flight in me falls still.
Fate is the luck we suffer, useless to grieve
songs of a marsh wind, my throat lit with sky.
This form I take I hardly know myself.
I lie beside you, husband, true as any
woman in the dark. We make our choices,
soothe ourselves and still they don’t feel
mine—these cold thin fingers weave
the cloth as if it’s ever enough. For you
who set the splint with ring stone.
You who bleed the feathers from my heart.
Diane Unterweger
Diane Unterweger lives and writes near a small lake in Nashotah, Wisconsin.
Artwork: Leslie Ann O’Dell, “Layers”
Website: http://www.leslieannodell.com/
Gingerbread House Lit Mag 