Illustration by Mormei Zanke

Angle of repose

Poem by Michael Pendreigh

Foreshocks ignored:
reliving her soft temples against my thumbs
kiss her forehead. Now

she is a foot away
a canyon between us, paralyzed
on the fringe
in a frozen state
seized by the seventh Hades.

A gust of wind beckons
her body to mine:
let forms dissipate
and fall into the night

into morning
into fossils

inanimate
faulting

the metrics of intimate denudation.
Our Grecian urn
tumbles from its perch
on the edge of the strata
we thought
immune to erosion.