poem09 Jan 2022 06:12 pm
Sarah Shirley
Moonburn happens on very clear nights to the pale swimmers venturing out, their skin bare to the air and the water. They call to each other in trills and gargling fluting sounds as they crawl over the rubble that is left when cities fall. Their milky skin sings at the touch of reflected radiance, tapping into an ancestral memory of a time when we strode out into the brightest days, when we stood beneath the orange sun and bathed in heat and light. Long ago there was a sandy beach here, but now our children, skin bleached by the years spent trembling in the shadows of the fallout shelters, creep out into the moonlight-silvered city, and lay their pale bodies down to rest in the dark at the water’s lapping edge.
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