Wednesday Poetry Class

This is earlier than I usually post, but I couldn't wait!
My first sestina! And it was really hard, and I'm thrilled.

It's called... (ahem) "Sorrows" and it's about how sadness seems to roost in your chest.

Sorrows

Erratic flutters the bird trapped inside this heart of mine.
And with the cupboard of my chest exposed, it uses my ribs to nest.
Sorrow makes its bed there, and home.
My chest is a cold cathedral, a bare bones goodbye.
Water trickles down the eves when I swallow
and stains the floor like tea-stained paper.

Like the floor, I am a tea-stained piece of paper,
I swear it. This empty body of mine
curls like dog-eared pages, makes it hard to swallow.
This bird made a roost here, to nest,
filled with bits of nothing and letters of goodbyes.
The rib-lined cavern of my chest is becoming home.

It's cozy down there, sorrow is furnishing a home,
Hanging pictures from my sternum, walls covered in paper.
Breathing as deep as I can, there's no exhaling a goodbye.
The bird and sorrow are holding hands, just out of reach of mine.
Their embrace is cold, and shivers ripple from their nest.
In this cold cathedral, nests are made by swallows.

It seems that the dip of flight of the swallow
is the turn of the confused seeking home.
And they have made a place to nest,
between the ribbed walls, and with a stained floor paper,
they seem happy in this small, cupboard home.
They needed room for an armoire, so my right lung said goodbye.

It was difficult goodbye,
more difficult than the sorrow that forces itself into a swallow.
As for my chest, I have an armoire, a lung, and sorrow in mine
And my ribs are without the skin they call home.
My breath is as white and crisp as paper
Without a lung in which to nest.

Like the intertwining of threads, the nest
is the fabric of this sorrowful, desperate goodbye.
Woven from my tangled hair and the bones of paper
I took in my mouth and swallowed,
like a war-time secret, a longing home.
These threads, nesting or not, are mine.

Without this tearful nest, I am without what is mine.
Sorrow has made such a home here, it's impossible for goodbyes.
The swallows are content to swoop and dip as they please, and I am paper thin.


Thoughts?