The Sky Above My Bed

The sky above my bed
is nine feet high and in moments of wonder,
I stand with my feet cratered on the bed
and I can palm the plastered clouds, the mini T-rex. Is this
what dreams are made of? 

For nine weeks, I have laid here in hours of three, 
in hopes that these hours might seal what my spine’s dura feels:
bruised beyond these words by a drunk driver. 
At night, my husband reads the biographies of saints, 
and we question how they held on. 

For it has taken nine weeks, yet one afternoon, I see it:
the robin’s robust body takes flight. Or 
does its claws grip the ground? And 
have I glimpsed its attempt? Now I see another, 
a mourning dove, struggling mid-flight. 

The ceiling clouds obscure its body. Or
is the obscurity its color 
too light to see? When I was nine, 
I found a robin’s blue freckled egg, 
its backside dented, that had fallen from the juniper tree

outside my bedroom window.
I knew of death in animals.
I knew its mama would reject the egg, 
just like the stray mama cats would reject the kittens in the milk barn
birthed on the gunny sacks that smelled of my hands. 

And now I wonder: How 
do the robin and mourning dove endure 
the winds? How 
does the fledgling, then its wings—how 
can they rest upon the invisible?

Now I see— 
the robin’s attempt, 
the mourning dove’s flight, 
the clouds breaking— 
they’ll fly away, some glad morning.

Megan Huwa is a freelance editor in higher education and a poet and writer in San Diego, CA. Her work has been published in Letters Journal, The Penwood Review, The Midwest Quarterly (Summer 2023), The Habit podcast (Summer 2023), and her website meganhuwa.com. Born the fifth generation on her family’s Colorado farm and a classically-trained pianist, she melds in her poetry aurality, rural life, and empathy through the varied voices and lives of those she observes. A rare health condition keeps her from living in Colorado, so her poetry reaches for home—both temporal and eternal.