Emma Richey

Firelight Watches

I might lose myself here 

Beneath the battery of a lightbulb’s 

Sunrise flickering flame 

Beckoning alarm bells 

Pelting each jewel tone 

In the jungle of pillows, blankets, socks shaken 

Into the undergrowth 

The prowling scent of a coffee maker 

Crying like parrots 

The tiny pupils in its digits blinking 

The sound of hooved feet darting up and down 

And through the mist 

Until thickets of emerald part and a toddler face 

Unearths me from a primordial sleep 

Where I coveted the dawn 

And gleamed watchful in twilight under piles of leaves 

To the tune of firelight watches 

Directions to the Last Place You Saw Me

In a waking-dream station 

You watched me mutter bird songs 

Like sheet music stationary 

Placing each word into your pocket 

Like breadcrumbs into your expectant ears 

Playing scales of an expanding universe 

Higher and higher until 

I splayed my wings onto balding earth 

And danced until the sun watered 

Until I bent my beak and tilled the rows and rows 

Of crimson stars and placed the blue between 

The solemn silences that speak 

Like sight 

That you poured in and out of your eyes and ears and tightly closed 

Fists where you wished you could hold more than feathers 

Until the scientists of your nameless dream world 

Pressed a finger to your lips and told you 

To wonder if new worlds could come to life 

And make new music and new stars 

Promise to be home inside you  

Until your feet too split 

Into trios 

And triplets 

And trifectas 

And sets of notes that carry together and sing apart 

Like perfect chords that sound like songs that bring you there and 

Take you back 

Night Watch

I wish to creep, to curl 

Softly inside myself 

Hiding parched palms 

In the hollowed tunnels 

Of my own heart 

To feel myself beating, expectantly 

And slowing with sleep 

To feel tone-deaf snores 

Ricochet and rock 

Or perhaps to climb interior rungs of vertebrae 

And gaze at the ocean-tilled surface of my brain 

To watch it undulate and yawn 

As currents of blood tidal pool 

At the request of a somnolent sea 

Where I can float and watch the horizon 

Dance with blood vessel stars