A sparrow mistakes my window for sky, shattering glass,
feathers, and blood—death builds its house wherever it wants.
Mystics believe sorrow takes seven years to reach the soul,
our histories enter us while we crack an egg into a skillet
or stand on our porch watching leaves disappear inside
the rusty bed of a truck. Our work is to record the flawed world
—I wanted to save this night, our mouths moving
like moth wings, dusting one another's shoulders, bellies,
and thighs, but daylight stole the foreign and familiar lines
we mapped on each other's skin late in the animal dark.
The Animal Dark by Valentina Gnup | Lemon Poetry Reed Diffuser
Valentina Gnup's poetry collection, Ruined Music, was published by Grayson Books in 2024. In 2023, she won the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award for Poetry and second place in the Yeats Prize for poetry. In 2019, she won the Lascaux Prize in Poetry; in 2017, she won the Ekphrastic Challenge from Rattle; and in 2015, she won the Rattle Reader’s Choice Award. She lives in Mill Valley, California. Visit at valentinagnup.com
