The Midnight Poet
Annie Lang
I met a woman on a beach last night while I was sleeping.
The beach crept into my room, and I fell to land
in seas too warm to be this far north.
She smiled at me, and cocked a gun,
and said, ‘Don’t you think you’d better run?’
I told her, even dreaming, I do not rhyme the lines,
and she laughed at me and said she knew.
‘I know your lines,’ she said, and the gun melted.
It split through her fingers and splattered on the sand,
and inky hearts drew themselves beneath us.
‘You write your soul, and leave it raw,’ she said,
and the hearts mourned the toes that drew them.
‘You do not write, you bleed,’ she said, and barefoot
drew lines through the hearts and boxes around the lines.