Last night we were insects, rubbing our legs together
in an empty room. At four, I heard the rain and got up
to shut the windows and watch the thunderhead lumber past.
The clock blinked its red minutes away as I blinked
into the single bulb of the moon, its white hum in my ears.
Then, I crawled back to you, pressed close, waited
for the day to bootheel its way into our bed to wake us.
Outside the air steamed. As we stood in it,
the dome of the sky came down on us like a jar.
Nico Amador is a poet, educator and community organizer living in Vermont by way of Philadelphia and San Diego. His poems have appeared in Poets Reading the News, Poet Lore, Bedfellows, Plenitude, Nimrod International Journal, APIARY Magazine, and are forthcoming in Bettering American Poetry, Vol. 3. His chapbook, Flower Wars, was selected as the winner of the Anzaldúa Poetry Prize and was published by Newfound Press in 2017. He is an alumni of The Home School and the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Writers Retreat, serves as poetry editor at Thread Makes Blanket Press and helped to co-found the Rogue Writing Workshop of Philadelphia, which provides workshop instruction with accomplished poets to those writing and learning outside of academic institutions.
