char char char

Lorelei Bacht

we do not hold on to the mud / or the song of scarecrows. we let it / go. there is a river where it / goes. your clothes a patchwork of bin bags. / it is only luck who survives / who dies. 

everything falls. the london bridge / the termite cloud. no use for numbers words. we sit / in silence by the bank / hypnotised by our losses. a ripple licking / my boot I remember / 

my mother

but cannot cry. memories a hazard. / our dog our flat our children. I cannot. I / have quadruple-locked the gate / there will be no / before until we somehow manage an after.

which will require / food.

food first then thought. the sort that is / trapped in our bombed out museums. I remember / when as a whole we were magnificent / that was before the horizon / flattened into kilometre

upon kilometre of nil. the heat / of our little fire / barely reaching our fingertips.