Angela Bradley
The Gap in the Curtain
She shrank from the mystery
that sparked darting eyes
and danced on moonlit slabs,
lighting her stillness.
The curtain did not cover their sorrow.
Movements whispered within.
Her eyes pierced the slither of light,
found a stroking hand, the movement of hair.
She froze, fearing discovery,
but only an owl sounded the night,
an eerie forecast of parting
as sickness weakened the mother's womb
from which she had been born.
Sorrow watered her eyes.
She fled, wrapped in a veil of misery,
tears falling as channels
down her creasing face,
her agony disturbing
a childhood of memories.
She had glimpsed the future,
peered through time's curtain
at the dear face missing a smile,
at musical fingers, stiffly still, and eyes
painted with the longing for life?
As the wind moaned its requiem
and the stars candied the sky,
the gap in the curtain closed,
shrouding the light of yesterday
in the darkness of tomorrow.
Page(s) 23
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