Other Places

It was quiet. Like the lungs of a sleeping giant. It was dark. Far from the entrance. The obvious catastrophe. Of poison and panic. Pushing the moments away. As she laid. Breathing in the smoke. Of dead things on fire. And trapezoids losing their angles.

Small bird on the perch. Singing old songs. Muted by the expectation. The slant of the ladder. Bending her. And Threatening to break the strings. On limp puppets. An empty stage. A stalwart prefix. Eclipsing. The intrinsic doubt of humanity. As it sweeps through the pores right before she removes her face.

The plague. The expectation of overcoming the whims of our disease. Stutter through her bones in deafening drum beats. The road is empty. The world is silent. She cannot hear. She cannot see. The world choking at her hips. The water spilling. From the heavy buckets they bring. During these droughts.

A short trial. A brief audition with the pathogens of justice. The fever of blame exceeding. The range on her machine. The deaf throttle of the engine as it engages. Qualifying the blurring moments. A lion or a tiger she thinks. If I could only open my eyes and see.

An open window. The outside breezing in. A series of Little cataracts. a cumulative cancer. A leaky bucket. In which we carry these lives. A machine. A laborious engine. Requiring so much energy to get to where we've always been.

The future in soiled bandages. The infection persisting. Our rusty shovels sifting the sand. For stones big enough. Or other places where the water what thick enough. That these leaky buckets are enough.