Barbed Wire

Barriers may fall, but not their shadows.

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Barbed wire unravels
Spools across streets
Holed. Cratered.
Unerasable scars
Fester
Mould that stays.

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A child sees all
Peeking through a curtain
The eaves above his window
Try to close.
Protect.
The smell of stone,
Damp,
Dividing.

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It falls.
Shatters
In parts.
Concrete
Remains.
A whole heart–
Now two.
Sentences, cut off
Half spoken.

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His eyes–
Open.
Eyelids raised.
Time does not–
Stop.
She
Hums his name
A lullaby
In a prison
Beyond the wire.

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Concrete
Crumbled.
Still hardens
lost souls.
In streets
With patched holes.
A soft lullaby
Hummed.

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The soft lilt
trails.
But then circles.
With etched footprints
That spool–
Beyond
New
Wire.

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Please find a book of my horror microfiction, Echoes in the Dark, free for download here.