​To You Who’s Kept Me Company, by Meagan Chandler

​To You Who’s Kept Me Company
 
after Self-Portrait With Birdcage, by Joyce Tenneson (USA) 1976 (View at 2.15 in video above.)
​
Bare shrubs whisper in their shifting.
Sometimes, asleep, I wave my arms
like wings. Not because I fly in dreams,
but because when it’s dark, I am a bird.
 
Do swallows also glide in prayer? The trees,
the stones, the snow: we are a ballet
without audience, choreographed to songs
about staying where you settle.
 
And together, we are warm. Or so
I thought. I have nightmares: bound
with wrought iron—tight, tighter, I pace
paths of shadowed circles—small, smaller.
 
Until dawn’s cold light carries
the swallows’ pleas through gray, frosted glass.
The sinner when he hears a hymn.
So here, fly. Fly and forgive me.
 
Meagan Chandler
 
Meagan Chandler holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from Baldwin Wallace University. She currently attends the Poetry MFA program at Bowling Green University. Her works have been published or are forthcoming in Everyday Fiction, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Inscape. She also placed as a finalist and runner-up in the 2023 competitions for the Hollins’ University Literary Festival.