Small feet hit the ground.
A still life
Frozen in fear of capture
I slink down the hall.
My bare feet feel the carpet recede,
Cold linoleum curves up to meet my soles.
The imagined sounds of arguing fill the night
As the heady scent of dangerous things drifts from the basement
Accompanying the remembered crash of a wall broken in anger.
Dark shapes loom around me
As I run nowhere.
The night air still
And wrought with nightmares
But the air inside
Darker and stifling.
Slipping out unnoticed,
The dark caresses my cheeks.
A cicada’s mourning song
Laments the end of summer months.
The lingering of charcoal smoke
Follows as I vault myself onto the sagging rail,
No fear of the height,
Only awe of the stars;
Haunted eyes wide.
The sky is a well-loved garment
Not quite black
And worn through in places
Where brilliant light shows the skin of heaven
And I do not look down, only up
And my tears forget gravity
And run up to join the stars
Twinkling on the shirt of God.