She laughs too loudly, her cackles
dimming the light towers. Her sighs
send back the tides. She opens
her hands and sapphires turn
to berries that fall into his bowl.
She covers him with her feathered
cloak, and he sleeps a forest slumber.
When he awakes, she takes him
to her bed and he weeps silver tears
of joy and wonder that fill the ocean.
When his enemies come, she ties them
to arrows and shoots them into a denim sky.
He wails that this is too good, that she
is too much. But Paul, she tells him,
she cannot daisy chain her days into easy,
weave shrouds or cast nets for only three fish.
Someone who can turn petals into golden
topaz to spit at the moon cannot be told
to turn them into glass. That Paul, she says,
is like unbreathing the air or unseeing
the sun, unfeeling a moon crater
of heartbreak. And this Paul, she tells
him, is what it would be like to be small.
Jessica Gregg is a Baltimore-based poet, former journalist, and proud rowhouse dweller. Her work has appeared in Broadkill Review, Delmarva Review, Global Poemic, Rise Up Review, and the Under Review, among other publications.