Emma Aylor

Daydream

It finally rains. The gray softens
and drops, goes vegetal, touches
ground. My window faces empty street,
swept sidewalk, the close hill
forever fallen away. The longer the rain
the deeper the need. Only the water
and crows move, backward, rising
together like a leavened sin.
I sleep alone with all my rings on.
I wake with your hand in my hair.

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Emma Aylor’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Pleiades, New Ohio Review, the Cincinnati Review, Sixth Finch and Salt Hill, among other journals, and she received Shenandoah’s 2020 Graybeal-Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets. She holds an MFA from the University of Washington. Originally from Bedford County, Virginia, she lives in Lubbock, Texas and is a PhD candidate at Texas Tech University.