Tom Darin Liskey

Visitations

I was ten

That winter night

When my brain

Burned with fever

And I lay

Dreaming awake

That you had come back

From the firmament;

An unwinged angel

Sitting at my bedside

Speaking words

That sounded like fire

In my ears.

I don’t know

If it was real anymore.

Maybe it was just yearning

To touch you once more

The way the blind read braille;

Or maybe it was just

The hot syllables of sickness

Wailing like sinners

At a tent revival

Behind my burning eyes.

But whatever it was

That night, with the snow

Beginning to fall

Your hand touched my skin

And the fever broke.

Tom Darin Liskey spent nearly a decade working as a journalist in Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil. He is a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi. His writing has appeared in HeartWood Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, and Biostories, among others. His photographs have been published in Hobo Camp Review, Museum of Americana, Blue Hour Magazine, Synesthesia Literary Journal and Midwestern Gothic.