Let the ceasefire morning begin,
with smoke that drifts from soil like breath
exhaling once but does not dare inhale again.
The day bleeds in, a gun against a head of cloud,
invades my throat
like metal fingers.
I cannot look the sky in the eye. That churning sea
of hellfire and indifference.
Like fingers pulling triggers, the click of heart resumes
echoing against a chasm with no ending to break
the fall.
There is no stillness but the stillness of the dead that
freezes every molecule. My fingertips are the dead. My tongue tip is
the dead.
The hum of you and you and you that should be here and
here and here and here.
My ears cannot hear quiet for
the thunderous wretched silence
that shouts with mouths and sticks in throats of wind
a howl upon the wasted land:
And now what’s left? I can’t open my eyes to look it in the face.
What’s left to do but try and let the mourning begin.
