D.A. Moulton

The list goes on.
Cry me out a layer
thick and salty
crusted crystal.
Digging beneath walls
like Berlin. And I am east,
so far east.
Hiding in hollowed out car seats,
deplumed and desperate.
Save me from razor blade
wired fence, made of mind
and kind. Thrashing aside
long boat river bullets
running.
Bloated and blind
drifting to the bitter Atlantic.
Weeping at the roll call.

We are becoming smaller again.
The soul of a mouse,
hiding inside the walls of this house.
Time doesn’t matter
and time isn’t waiting.
Time simply turns to water.
It’s wasting us down
dripping carving watering
waiting in a basement.
And so the wasting begins.
All around us thin and waning,
shouldering cobwebs shuddering.
Shrinking, scratching for crumbs
or a thimble of water.
Hiding from the light stretching
behind the walls of this house.
Squeezing into a hole smaller.
Inventing tiny dreams
that could fit into a matchbox bed.

We hit the high line on the horizon
passing pines and oaks
with tattered arms outstretched.
A tragic trajectory.
And the stars winced while the moon rolled over
out of sight and mind.
We crashed through leaves upon fingertips
too wooden to break from their ache
and snatch a shirttail or sleeve.
Gravity bound as we were.
And then there was the ground
scattering us, shattering us
into a million different people and places.
We never knew we could be
so proud and desperate,
so separate from who we were.
Now beneath the trees
beating the dust from our hats,
gathering up our skirts to knees.
Striking out, newborn captains of destiny.