The Flood

The village cats, cold and hungry,
run down cracked streets,
splashing paws in puddles of night.
The thunder is hiding
behind arching stone pines.
I bend with the trees gathering
valsamo, oregano, before the sky
opens again over the island.
Your words, dripping like a raindrop
from a bird’s feather, ricochet off
my eyelids, land in the rocks.
The valley smells of sage and saltpeter.
Intimacy insisting, intimacy
walking backwards down a mountain.
I slip across a mudslide and
stoop down with a darkened balance.
My head tilts towards the rain-soaked hills,
a page being turned in an aching book.
In it, the lines I write grow
to resemble the lines of your face–
dark with quiet wings.

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Evan Antonakes (he/him) is an emerging poet and writer from Bates College in Maine. Other works of his have appeared in Snaggletooth Magazine and Vagabond.