“L’APPEL DU VIDE”

You’ve always paid so much attention to the dead.

What are they whispering to you?

Hypnotized by her 

decaying bones as they 

turned to cobalt butterflies, 

flying toward the moonlight.

What then? What then?

Oh God, what then?

Rotten apple cores,

maggots in the soil,

mildew on all walls.

I buried a crow with

the tiniest of fingers.

Falling backwards on 

that spiral staircase

something awakened 

and never bed again.

L’appel du vide. 

Not yet corpses, still we rot 

drawn to those whose souls 

seem too frail to bear 

the sight of another sunrise. 

So we’ll bleed together 

about how we didn’t ask 

for any of it.

And we'll secretly gamble on

who’ll kill who first.

M.L. January ‘25