Shield

Tanja Bartel

If a bird visits your window sill and no one has died recently, it’s just a bird. Or the person in the window is an omen to the bird. No one can say. If hope is the thing with feathers, hopelessness is bald as an egg.

*

He throws sand at my window when we fight. One grain at a time. Ping, sting.

*

I’m afraid of the sight on the street from my window. There’s something on the glass and I don’t know if it’s on the outside or insidious. Could be my face. Streetlights have never saved anyone. Still, we walk under lights, flooded with trust.


Tanja Bartel is a writer and teacher. Her work has been published in various journals such as Grain, CV2, NewPoetry.ca, The Maynard, The Prose Poem Project, Right Hand Pointing, Red Eft Review and the The Rusty Toque.

What do you think?

*

css.php