by Deborah J. Shore

Today a bird collided with my chest,

ricocheted off my sternum,

frantic to join her mate or friend—already flown,

that umber confusion darting into dark

from who knew where.

She—unseen—had been trapped

on the door wreath

while I bent to lift my delivery—

the door that had swooshed open,

bisecting her sleep.

As I stood up, she must have panicked.

Just where had they tucked in to roost

amid the frosted gilt balls

and plastic evergreen? Most welcome

of guests taking refuge

from a January rain

in the porch depths—

I look out into the crusted snow

and drear, wishing you could know my amity

and still rest here. Then considering

the doors I need opened for me—the healing—

the many times slammed and bolted doors,

their entrance a garland of would-be green,

swollen to bud, then frozen,

I quaver again from the juddering.

But this precarious somehow

holds me, I think,

nestled in the agonizing “no,”

the silent brink.

Deborah J. Shore’s poems have recently appeared in Columbia Journal, The London Magazine, Pensive, Nashville Review, and Thimble Lit, among others. She has spent the better part of her life housebound with sudden onset severe ME/CFS. She has won poetry competitions at the Anglican Theological Review and the Alsop Review.