No one notices the edges slip away,

how the untoothed night simmers

in the streets and alleyways.

To the innocent, there’s no reason

to question whether dimensions shift

or wonder what happens in

the moments before the scrim is lifted.

I have spent many a darkness

pondering what is lost when

peripheries vanish—what beauty

or desolation, lacking witness,

is diminished. What creature steals

away to die, alone and undiscovered.

I can tell you this: My eyes have grown

accustomed to night’s trickeries—

the apparent ease with which the body

accepts injury, the scurrying figure

beneath the streetlight’s pale flicker.

Underlying every human wreckage

is an emptiness born of want.

Sometimes I feel it. Walking the vacant

hallways, I listen for the lost,

the inconsolable, the unforgiven.

I count their footsteps, carry the weight

of their brokenness in my bones.