Our Only Escape
Lisa Caloro

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After we drink the flying
potion, the feathers

inside us won’t lie down,
won’t be still, our blood tricked

with the dream
breeze singing through stars—

light reaches places words
can’t touch. The dark skies, wombs

where we hide scars and poppies,
oceans, mirrors. The authors

of men and angels swell
with failure, unable to quell tongues,

venom. Our daughters need more
protection from the hell of blooming.

We gather the wings of flightless
birds, wrap them around valerian root,

concoct a tincture to purge the wax of silence
softly from our skin. A skein of forgetting unknotted,

we head out in no particular direction
leaving men on the ground blind, voiceless,

wandering in circles.