Laying his head on my chest
in the still dark morning, he fell
silent, holding his breath.
I thought I heard something.
He grabbed his stethoscope and exhaled
to warm the metal before pressing it
against my bare skin.
I hear a murmur.
He placed the buds of the scope
in my ears and the room swam away
with the hurry of my own blood:
a beat then a swish—wind rushing
through a door left open, a murmuration
of starlings flooding an open sky.
Hayley Bowen (she/her) is a poet, an avid craft beer enthusiast, an amateur painter, and a terrible knitter. Her work has appeared in Scythe Magazine, Sylvia Magazine, Dunes Review, and elsewhere. Although she has spent portions of her life in the Sonoran Desert of Southern California, the Rocky Mountain foothills of Colorado, and the Black Hills of South Dakota, she has decided that “home” is wherever she happens to be at the moment. She currently resides in an attic in Upstate New York where she is an MFA candidate in creative writing poetry at Syracuse University.
Latest posts by Hayley Bowen (see all)
- Winter in New York - 31st January 2022
- Starling Heart - 30th April 2021
- An Orchard of Her Own - 9th September 2020