Evening silhouettes on the white-blue sky.
Stone shadows, cool on my skin.
A beginning like Charon,
steering his cool blue bark across the styx —
in the shadow at the bottom of the steps.
My parents have gone ahead, before
I understood that they were —
the fear of the water is almost
as strong as the guilty murmur of the tongue,
is almost at my wrists.
The pavement seems to sigh as I shift
my feet from foot to foot.
As though lowering its own strained shoulders
onto a bed of rest.
“Foxes have holes and birds have nests…”