The Night We Were Caught in the Incidental Light

I wore a dress inked with starlings, your favorite bird
of which I knew little except after you pulled the silk
plumage above my head, angled and outspread

after you pinioned my arms, the sound of you inside
was like a wing-beat thrum.

I knew even less of iridescence, how the surface of everything
morphed with each feathered touch. Of certainty,

I will say this I was trussed in your hands
waiting to be held, our bodies a luminous intensity

expanding

contracting, the night covered in a metallic sheen.

That in the incidental light you appeared soft as vellum
spindling against my skin and stuck in memory as briar to burlap.

We remained flightless, unable to glean possibility from pulsing.

Kelly Andrews’ poems have appeared or are forthcoming in PANK, Weave Magazine, Pear Noir, and others. Her chapbook Mule Skinner is available from Dancing Girl Press (2014). She coedits the online journal Pretty Owl Poetry and has a hand in creating B.E. Quarterly, a sometimes-quarterly zine. You can find her at http://kellyandrewspoetry.com/