letters to the moon [poetry]

when the world ends

the world might end here.
it might end with souls drifting,
lolling somewhere

between lost and found,
between contracts with false names,
in promises drawn in cracked smoke
and mirrors,
bleeding palms,
and the ringing of church bells

the senseless grappling of parents,
and children who pretend
not to hear

it might even end with the sighing of
two lovers who are armed
with the knowledge that
they will never have any moment like this

maybe it happens between
a siren's song and the white,
pulsing reach of a lighthouse,
impassive and watching,
empty eyes stinging
and marking the trail home in salt

it might end with unsaid i love you's
and slamming doors,
cut lights
and phones that have hung up too soon

maybe it ends with no warning at all;
no whisper, no cue in,
no exit stage left, in all caps,
unyielding and unsightly
in felt sore thumbs
and eyes and burning muscles,
cracked teeth and bitten tongues

the euphoria, perhaps,
a match well played,
a buzz so electric it has your blood
singing what was forgot,
though it was never lost

though it will never be known again
it takes you tenderly as anything
into its mouth,
swallows neatly, exults in it,
and lets you go

it may be that you find
this is where
the world is allowed to end

entertained, here,
in the opening of doors
at early hours, breathless pauses
where words escape all
sense or meaning, dazed and
dizzyingly in its full and empty
and warm and dozing and safe

where nothing makes sense but lies
still, perfectly in union together,
yin and yang
and god with his angels and saints
in seatbelts and safety pins,
child gates and nursing mothers
who hold blankets over their chests,
as though to enrich a soul
is their deepest sin

it's in the gasp when bruises find firelight,
the careful hands and probing questions,
the way that heather burns
again with skilled and remembering hands,
the way grasses blow when you
invite company in night air
inside through a window,
a missed note
in a scale you could do in sleep

in hisses of frustration
and coping of overt sympathies like
dying flowers in dry vases
and the strangling chorus of nightlife
and looming walls
when the dreams get too real to remain
inside your head

the world won't end
in bickering children
or deferred power plays,
or the meagre tax offering of butterfly wings
consumed with serrated knife and fork
by men in suits and ties
struggling under the weight of their own fists

it won't end with the crying of
those who can't see the horizon
bleeding in irreducible colours
for them alone, an anaemic audience
without hands to clap with

or its last gust of wind that
sloths and wheedles,
drags feet through fronds of
unlocked windows,
words,
what human intimacy is and
what might have been

or dead legs and iron grit,
stone still heat and elevated comfort,
the caress of the glorified
salve of sunlight that comes
after a hurricane

the world will end as it began,
and no one will be there to tell such tales.