Northern Ballad

On a white and blistered evening,
she set out for morning,
long fed from the fat of my skin.
Our sex had got boring

and she hated my growing thin.
I wrote down a letter
with the blood of a broken stem,
to warn that the weather

approached like a horde of men—
who, when seeing the fawn,
wet their lips and whipped around,
and forced her towards the dawn.

When morning fell, I held the sound
of her wild, glass-like "no".
The wounds of the sky were salted
with the snows of her sorrow.