Microscopic Winter II

You say there are no words in the English language
For the dark flocking of your sadness

And spent eleven months at sea,
Recording what you were certain
Was the light at the end of the world.

After the winter of milk-baths,
Rooms of short-wave radios, stacked,
And your lifelong study of the saints,

You wrote me of the Accident in father’s bathroom:
The perfect slant of the blade,
And how fast it all happened.

You said you could feel the opening
Of your mind like a kingdom of light,
Then a dark bead coming at you like a black sun.

The next morning
I went up to the roof, climbed in the wire
Coop, and set your Arctic falcon free.

—Cynthia Cruz

Cynthia Cruz's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, Agni, and Grand Street, as well as others. She teaches in New York City.

Originally published in the February/March 2004 issue of Boston Review.