Fat-faced, crater-skinned, dawn-dragging moon.
Always the same slow breach from the horizon’s
pocket into the sky’s coin slot. Sleepless night.

My hollow apartment. Early light crawling
through my blinds like a jail cell slammed closed.
No, more like my brother and I whispering

through the brass keyhole in the locked
door connecting our rooms, cool metal eating
our secrets, no words, only the warmed air
in our lungs passed through in thin puffs. The space
that separates then from now, I am nothing but breath.

A leaf stuck to a wet pane, sliding down like the sigh
before tripping on sleep, no strength to stay, to brush
his hair to the side or curl the crinkled corner
of his stick-figure portrait where I’m pink wax
holding his paper hand, and we can still pretend

life is what we make with a box of crayons,
a yellow triangle sun, a red drawn heart floating
above us. My fan blades beat above. My old fridge

hums. Rattles like it could replace his heartbeat next door,
like my shivering floor could be his bedframe creaking,
scraping against our shared wall, his body turning at night.
It’s the same, our nightmare: That tilted house.

Naked nail in the wall still ringing
from the whip ripped off. Bruised belts
swinging in dad’s closet, prong-tongues
chittering against buckle-mouths. Scab
trails on our thighs, the soft of our backs,
dried blood wrapping our palms and wrists
as if it were rosary beads we held.

—Kaylee Salazar

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