Hannah Silverstein: Enough Moonlight


How long since you’ve seen it?                                 

                                 That door? In every dream I heft its iron
                                 and try my weight against it—

As if you were free.
                                As if I were free to come and go
                                 without forgetting where I came from. Without
                                 being forgotten. That old house

The latch clicked shut to seal your leaving. 

                                 It didn’t happen like that. I don’t remember.

You weren’t stopped by—did you say—                                 

                                 Moonlight? Sure
                                 the moon did crack the night
                                 above the maple branches—

You were young.

                                I was seventeen that summer,
                                licensed at last to drive myself
                                away from my father’s kingdom.

No one is ever felled by moonlight.

                                  I was

                                   frozen
                                                             by moonlit grasses

                                  by the shadow of that farmhouse

                                  three smokeless chimneys lengthening
                                  to the road’s edge…

The same light?
                                  The world was charged with a future tense,
                                  choices easily unmade. All I wanted

What? What did you tell yourself?

                                    Air. All I wanted was some air.


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