Far away I hear the wind pressing nearer,
the corners of the house begin to buckle in, ashamed.
I climb inside the dusky words of a book unclaimed
for all the dim years past, becoming clearer.
On those dark pages no one writes what is missing
and I cannot wait for this grief to make sense.
The beaten child hunches over, tangled in the fence;
at length, his shadow distended by dark waters, fishing.

The windows have eyes facing ever inward,
staring down shadows at all these dark places.
Panes shudder, rattling in their frame cages
at the lost things: a boy I unearth from pinewood.
Unlidded, my eyes clamp shut, against murky depths

laid open, his stare long saddened by rejection.
The death I gave him refusing the question,
whose guilt I now bear like an old hermit, unkempt.

Underneath, floorboards groan, creak with the great weight
I gather around my body. A storm approaches, raging
along the horizon, tossing seagulls inland, waging
unwieldy fielded currents, worms strung on hooks like bait.
The boy brings bruises back into the house, deep wounds
surfaced by winds and new rain. He climbs into my lap
and holds me quietly for long moments, like a clap
of thunder rumbling up from darkened and muddy ground.

The light switches refuse to stay turned down.
They throw light all over the house, pressing darkness
down into the cellar like an uneasy calmness
numbing our bodies to sleep, or else be found,
knowing what we have become: the wizened hermit
and the boy undone, by a life lost in stasis,
the way we allow shame to create the basis
for the storm to rise, lifting the shadow into respite.