Stark math, pale field, stubble & chaff— 
the ravens collect in the torn  

upturned chest. How you touched me once,  
firstly, freshly our young mouths full  

of echo. You said you’d known me  
since birth, a vision on the edge  

of your sight. How ravens mean  
in pairs—2: luck. 4: health. 6: pestilence— 

so tidy a ledgering of the world’s hand.  
Like these fields we grew around,  

when seen from on high, counties  
cut like sugar cubes. Though none of it  

was ever neat, was it? Perhaps, sweet— 
the ravens giving the stag 

one final bloom. The blade born  
in my fist & when you swallowed it  

whole. The room we made in each other  
which has no roof, where time falls  

from a slate sky like beak  
on flesh. You pressed me 

& I was ark, aviary—ribs plucked & strummed  
until a low hum: birdsong 

through deerskin, an aftermath  
of harvest; how we fracture towards 

opening. Wide oh so wide sky, field,  
body. Each year with only the signs 

of other years. Gather the bones,  
arrange them however you wish  

& in the spaces between, the shape  
you have made my life.