_was a mud-faced room
was the whites of eyes at midnight in straw beds
looking skyward and I wondered how many of them
cupped a whisper shorn of love and doomed
_was like being locked behind the firebox door
mouths crammed with heat, hands full of smoke, naked
and singing despite the flames at our backs
despite the fear dribbling down our necks
_was a room within the room where we've
plunged into the shallows up ahead
stone dark with cottonmouths sliding over
fat, green waters, around our waists
_was an echo lost in a well
was, finally, a wall of skins erupting into scars
no one ever dreamed of, and a blank cold
shouting deep inside our blood--here I am
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