Stefanie Kirby

Quickening

It ticks against the womb
with wings. To notice only
an eclipse of moths, humming
soft and pliable as limbs. Like
dust, it pulls apart and shudders
back. Blocks the light: less
stellar, more moon, the bones of
a galaxy softened to skin.
When it’s time, the interior folds
its wings, rounds into a clock
clicking. This birth brings gears
and seconds and leftover wires
wrapped like veins before
that tapping grinds to silence.

Stefanie Kirby lives and writes along Colorado’s Front Range. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net, and appear or are forthcoming in Cincinnati Review’s miCRo, Poet Lore, Stonecoast Review, Passages North, The Moth, The Offing, and elsewhere.