Come here, night, wrap your velvet arms
around my softly elated body. Tonight,
I am an old piano suddenly awake

toward the serene feet of stars. 

Sweet night, you water my forehead’s asters.
I drink the constellations

that light all the lily-filled fields of within me.
I am grateful heavens.

You are an accordion that inhales
and exhales the dreams of lost tulips.
The moon rests its kisses on the tips of your blue wheat.

Dear night, let just-born birds learn to fly from my eyelids. 

For my sake, please,
let only the suffering die this beautiful night.

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Eva Skrande came to the United States from Cuba. Her publications include My Mother’s Cuba (River City Publishing Poetry Series) and Bone Argot (Spuyten Duyvil Press). A new book, The Boat that Brought Sadness into the World, is due out in June 2024.Her poems have appeared in Clockwise Cat, SurVision, Visions International, Smartish Pace, among others. Recently she was the feature poet at AlternaCtive PubliCations. More work can be found on her website: https://evaskrande.wordpress.com/. She has taught for Writers in the Schools, the Houston Independent School District where she taught Creative Writing, as well as the University of Houston-Downtown. In her current transfiguration, she teaches and tutors at Houston Community College.