It’s too hard to be with you on the crushed doorstep
glass slivers embedded in dreams, sudden smoke in our nostrils,
lungs half collapsed and I’m trying to stand here with you,
by the crushed doorstep, the cracked lintel,
and my body shakes with the passing, trembles as we attempt
to speak in the growing silence of the trees,
the still-born birds, the fleeting infants that cry in the womb
it’s too hard to be with you all day and all night
I’ve put the moon in my pocket for safekeeping
do you still have the sun, is it hot and beautiful,
does it pull us into its orbit, shining stars and whatever we have imagined,
or have we lost sight here, lost touch, standing together
glass slivers embedded in dreams, sudden smoke in our hair
and the haunting screams of the never-to-be-born infant?
Andrea Moorhead
Picture: Claire Palmer
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