Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
On this thousandth
day, God said Let there be sky
as grey as dirty
dishwater. No light
to let in. You needed to
go to the store, but
I expedited
my prayer for a free car
wash. And so it pours,
the world outside our
window a jarful of beads;
capped, jangling. You call
this “first fall,” the earth
yawning a cold that doesn’t
quite get into the
bones. And I don’t know
how to tell you that my knees
predicted this drop
in temperature, my
joints like two church choirs singing
the same note. You throat-
breathe a fog onto
the glass and strike a face through
it. The banana-
curved frown sweating down
to the sill. Come back to bed,
I say. Come to me.
Taylor Byas is a Black poet and essayist. She currently lives in Cincinnati, Ohio where she is a second year PhD student and Albert C. Yates Scholar at the University of Cincinnati studying poetry. She is also a reader for both The Rumpus and The Cincinnati Review, and the Poetry Editor for FlyPaper Lit. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, The Journal, Glass Poetry, Borderlands Texas Poetry Review, Hobart, Pidgeonholes, The Rumpus, and others. She has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, Best New Poets 2020, six Best of the Net nominations, and is the 1st Place Winner of the 2020 Poetry Super Highway Contest.