This is How You Lose the Time War

by Amal El-Mohtar

But if you hunger, I swell. You have me watching birds, and though I don’t know their names like you know them, I have seen small bright singers puff before they trill. That’s how I feel. I sing myself out to you, and my talons clutch the branch, and I am wrung out until your next letter gives me breath, fills me to bursting.