MORNING by April Michelle Bratten

On the morning
of your dark-sky cry,
your foreign howl,
your pale-handed fear,
you phoned to tell me
that I was no sunshine,
only a cloud
dressed in borrowed lightning.

You had fallen out of love with me.

I drove down Broadway
raining
skin and gray parts,
perplexed,
an incorrigible animal.

I phoned you back to say
you did not know me,
not really,
that I was no storm,
only a drizzle,
a water-horse,
eating mist over the day,

and please remember
my mouth is warm enough
to taste clean air.

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April Michelle Bratten currently lives in Minot, North Dakota. Her book, It Broke Anyway, was released in 2012 by NeoPoiesis Press. (http://www.neopoiesispress.com/12401/100134.html) She edits Up the Staircase Quarterly.