The dark comes in on my girl’s 10th birthday.

Fire bearing crow feathers — no, ash.

It comes with its big breath,

sun without light.

Cold morning

in the surrounding counties,

everyone blinking, looking around,

phones lifted to the horizon.

— Excerpted from “Smother: Poems.” Copyright (c) 2025 by Rachel Richardson. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.