In the gloaming, in the roiling night

Ruth Awad
The hurt returns as it always intended—it is tender
as the inside of my thighs, it is as blue, too. O windless,

wingless sky, show me your empire of loneliness,

let me spring from the jaws of what tried to kill me.

Let me look at your face and see a heaven worth having, all
your sorry angels falling off a piano bench, laughing.

Do you burn because you remember darkness? Outside

the joy is clamoring. It is almost like the worst day of your life

is ordinary for everyone else.

Copyright © 2019 by Ruth Awad. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 5, 2019, by the
Academy of American Poets.