crickets millipede vole pups crunch of skull and brain meat big moon above the trees
I knew car
I had told car to my kits in our dark den and of the man river that moves through the woods
car was the other side of the bend grouse eggs the other side of the road
I stepped out and the light closed in
I woke before it hit alone in our bed, a drag of headlights smearing the wall.
I staggered through the house, down the hall I’ve come to know in footsteps, fingertips.
In the bathroom I kept the light off, stared into the blue glass lit by a big moon behind my toothbrush, the half-empty holder where yours isn’t anymore.
Mariah is a poet from Oxford, UK. She’s the author of the novel-in-sonnets the love i do to you which was shortlisted for the Melita Hume Prize and won the AM Heath Prize. She is currently the Jacqueline Bardsley Poet-in-Residence at Homerton College, The University of Cambridge.