Trench Soliloquy

By Rushika Wick

Dusk/ bomb-light.
My eyes telegramming
My heart STOP
My mouth tasting
magnesium white
STOP
Ears cradling wave upon wave
of air breaking on
Labyrinthine coast,
Martello towers
of tiny bone
fracturing.

Looking down into hands
which I no longer possess
I somehow morning-catch
the letter carried by moths from
the Wonderland
that is my pocket,
And bend my knees
closer to the
black loam
soon
to be my bed.

I try to make out vitality
distilled
into the green of the grass
but light leaches from the booming sky,
Rendering colour to spirit shades.
I collapse into
The smallest shape possible
Like a broken heart.
My heart -- An Anemone in a tidal rock pool,
Somehow I must read your words.

And there it is
My Lucifer
A glow worm
In the tarry night
Hanging onto the blade of grass before me --
One of many across
the dwindling horizon --
Changing the scene to a love story,
Stars for the Fallen,
Twinkling like childhood past,
Torches lighting
a rabbit tunnel
back to Hope.
My hands become my own
again and softly I grasp
the creature;
I hold it up gently between
Forefinger and thumb
Its incandescence
Revealing words from you --
Crawling to rescue mine
in these last minutes,
lit by glow worm light,
Lucifer and Luciferase.

In this stage of the life cycle
The glow worm
Exists only to consummate
It cannot eat and will
Die after a few days.
The light flickers in the cavern
Of my hands.
Around me -- a furred halo.