Gestation

They talk of getting blood from a stone but what of finding a single star in a constellation, luring the tip of an iris from beneath a lid, or birthing a voice from years of gestation? Perhaps some cocoons are just too warm to leave; some secret wings too paper-thin to last against the bite of the wind. Better to live in the shadow of a coward’s heavy lungs than face the wrath of lips that will not accept betrayal. “Gone is gone,” they say, your words weaving themselves into iron bars of no return.