The sky held a promise of snow, the unphasing gray of backlit clouds, and the still of cold, that penetrates the knuckles, until the age of my storied flesh cracked, blood as red as the Japanese maple I stood beneath, trickled like blood from the hunt in a fjord of inked permanence…the maple leaves, delicate in their size, severe in their edges, a stellar inferno that captivated my mind with memories of my babies, hours old and hands star-made in my vantablack void, the rivulets of my blood that painted me feral and infected all that was bleached in my ferocity…a gilded anomaly awaits my remembrance, tucked at the back of my left ear, an errant forsythia bloom in November dormancy, a supernova of temporal echoes…dawn, in the comfort of my home’s shadows, and the haunting lure of starling murmuration, stepping outside the French doors, an infinitesimal existence beneath the astronomical undulations of hundreds of wings, life sensations devoid of breath and pulse, my eyes shut in the terror and wonder of such sound, like beholding an angel that states, Be Not Afraid, while mesmerizing me with its ghastly form…love is celestial murmuration, is sore afraid, is blood stain permanence in my Winter lobe reminiscence…

E. A. O'Connell. November 30, 2021