Songbird
Natalie Marino
Before the blue light of morning
your breath loses itself.
Even the sycamores outside
the window acknowledge your end
with their sudden stillness.
You chose my birth
and watched me walk in the sun
and then into the world’s grief,
but we were not new together.
Did it seem so the first time
I became mesmerized by snow?
You never told me how much
I cost you.
Have I have heard the last
of your voice, before I define absence
completely?
I listen for your midnight
piano songs behind the opening sky.
Natalie Marino (she/her) is a poet, physician, and mother. Her work appears in Barren Magazine, Capsule Stories, Dust Poetry Magazine, Literary Mama, Moria Online, Re-side, and elsewhere. She also reads poetry submissions for Bracken Magazine. She lives in Thousand Oaks, California with her husband and two daughters.