“You would be nothing without me” he said
nothing:
murky as the inside of a pocket
stark black as bold type
nothingness
became my refuge
I survived on ink and absence
grew stronger
like attracts like
my darkness
lured crows
wings black slashes against sunlit sky
shadow birds
who craved me
who orbited their dark star
tilted their heads
to peer at me with
onyx eyes
I became Queen of Crows
my crown
a circlet of picked over bones
my robe
a cascade of diesel-dark feathers
my pulse
the rhythm of wingbeats
My crows in flight
stripe like ink
across the firmament
writing in bold calligraphy
words he cannot comprehend
leaving him with
nothing
Deborah Rosch Eifert is a poet and clinical psychologist. Her poetry has been published in Whiskey Island Quarterly (under a prior name), The Fib Review, the "Poets of Maine 2018" anthology, and the anthology “Exhuming Alexandria,” among others. She is a past recipient of the Cleveland State University English Department Undergraduate Creative Writing Award, a semifinalist in the 2018 Split Rock Review Chapbook Competition, and First Runner-up in the 2018 Esthetic Apostle Chapbook Contest. Dr. Rosch Eifert lives and writes in Maine, where she is obsessed with seals, birds and folklore.