EMILY PATTERSON

Still Life with Migraine and Birdsong

that arrives predawn, 
sides of the tent too dark to reveal 
the silhouettes of moths. 
 
I hold my head still and it hurts 
to blink while the birds begin—
not so much to sing
 
as to wake the air. I cannot 
name a single call, each one
an unreadable music:
 
the first almost distracted, 
a chirrup here and there,
as if she dozes between notes;
 
the second insistent and strange, 
a lift in the melody I can’t tune out, 
and so I stop trying: 
 
to unhear, to sleep, to will 
the thrum beneath my cheekbones 
to cease its rhythmic pulse. 
 
Soon, morning will burst, 
the birds’ collective song 
a many-layered cadenza.
 
Soon my daughter will stir
with the sun, ready to wade
through wet grass.
 
But for now, it’s enough 
to be wedged between earth 
and sky, to listen,
 
to bear what is mine,
and to half-touch, like grace 
notes, everything that isn’t.  

Emily Patterson (she/her) is the author of So Much Tending Remains, To Bend and Braid, and haiku at 5:38 a.m. Her work has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best Spiritual Literature and appears in SWWIM, North American Review, CALYX, Rust & Moth, and elsewhere. In 2024, she was a finalist in the Sweet Lit Poetry Contest and runner-up in the Sundress Publications Poetry Broadside Contest. Emily received her M.A. in Education from Ohio State University and works as a curriculum designer. She lives with her family in Columbus, Ohio.