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
