blood-
rusted, throat-stalks

bend
like tired voices in dry grass.

sickening, thought's
stalled.

the stench of spent speech
clings,
it clings -

as memories of hopes linger in the skin of damp hospital sheets, and
dare not stir. i dare
not stir. i am apart,

but no further from you, this hour, than the stammering
of the unborn within
this perpetual decay of echoes.

we pray, nightly,

screaming.