Monday, December 2, 2019

On entering a building (to cover a story) [Day 1047]

Entry dark  a climb ahead  wonder

falls through gaping doors   the gaze 

of recent dead who loiter  leaning 

on time-stained walls   brown-puddled 

stairs   each step a lullabye long sung

speckled linoleum: light on dark

expanse of midnight sky   moonlit water   

trailing  upward through echoways

catcalls and cries   voices askew   gaunt   

they mock and grate   late-summer crows   

fretting in heat-withered hemlock trees 

beside familiar red-dust roads   asking: 

what   what   what are you doing here?

here where diaper-bound babies scour 

the length of hallway floors   knees gray

with dirt  dog hair  and worse   here where

late at night   their mothers cry or leave

again   for second jobs   for third   where

fathers   deported   distant   or next door

they wait  burdened with the indifference 

of despair  of parents   their parents  and 

theirs   shielding the young from fear 

from hate   needing   wanting   to give 

one more day  one more   please: one more 

unseeing day   unknowing   innocence 

secure   what are you doing here   

where your pointed questions cannot pierce 

a truth   in a million years you’d never find 

words to ask   for what   you cannot know

no   still   you try   don’t look away   listen

gather   always with love   fear   horror 

due   precise   each fine thread a disparate 

life   you know   you should   probably not 

be there   and yet   you are   and so  


(c) 2019, by Hannah Six

Image: PxHere

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