A Dark

A Dark 

Burning,

Always burned

With dishes in my hand, I climb the oak stairway
To the bright light, angled through split panes
Into the middle of the room, which is 
Surrounded by smaller rooms.
Moving from the center, I space the steel forks
And steak knives on folded cloth.

In time, there is stillness

My eyes follow a light to the corner 
Which hangs over a dark summer pond.
A woman is staring from the doorway.
Her hands are at her sides, speaking without echoes of
Sound. Here eyes fall on me without seeing.
She has been burned, but is whole.

After, always remembering

I am afraid I have seen her undressed,
And so follow the stairway
And tell the women what I have seen.
All sounds flow through them,
As a crash of glass on greasy tile -
Shouting and running the hallways.

To be living, still living

Breathing through me, for a moment.
I return, and check the room, the stairways,
The only exits. She is gone. She never was 
Real in all these years I have lived.
I have seen enough to know now, what is
Real in this world.

All things moving, time

Now, outside the ruptured walls
Of the world, the silver sounds in
Daylight. The reckless willful men find
Ways to gamble, to send flesh in motion, to
Rend it inert and terrible. To will it become trapped
In a world it never wanted to make.