We moved from town to town, no place to rest,
old griefs receding in the mirror’s black;
the next one waking somewhere in the west,
with Kettenbiel descending at our back.
Our heads were thick with troubled dreams—
a slanted flight that shifts the summer grass;
our mother’s lover tracking us, a pulse of green
through broken stalks, their edges sharp as glass.
The engine failed and left us where it died,
the road a scar where counties split in half;
a water tower rising past the power lines,
where nameless byways narrow into chaff—
we slept inside the car that night, alone;
at dawn we rose and called the town our home.

The mornings gave no rest—just fear again;
we slept, we rose, with eyes still on the road;
no mercy there, just nights that clung like skin,
a faceless time that passed beyond the oaks.
Next winter brought a package to our fence:
a frozen keepsake, some inverted ark
from Kettenbiel, our mother knew at once—
that thing that settled there against the dark.
She counted every car that didn’t turn,
each flickered headlight splintered through the slats
as if a secret lifted miles from her,
the box already open in her hands.
It knew the door. It knew the shape of us.
A red pulse beat, and silence did the rest.