Poem-a-Day

Speckled omens leave their fingerprints on their ghostly faces. The fleeting patter of rain slicks the asphalt beneath them. This is how history gets rewritten: in the gaps between their bodies, against the backdrop of early spring. Somewhere in the long middle of the end. He, in military attire, an oak tree with galaxies smeared inside him. She, a forest in a barren world. By now, I know how this story goes. The war will architect their undoing, decades and petty arguments stacked up against a god of futile things. Illness will harvest their lifespans. He will gasp for eight years, bargaining with fate. Her heart will break again and again until it gives out. Between them, a daughter. One day, a mother whose face will mark mine. In that moment, flanked by her parents, she stands infinite as the trees behind her. Hair draping shoulders. Body barely pubescent. Hand over heart. You can tell she still believes the world loves her. Head tilted upwards, she dreams herself in-flight, hedging her bets on the vastness of a borderless sky.