Nobody screamed
not even when blackness came
and small waves bounced upward,
obscuring the shoreline from sight:
biting at the sky
not even when their necks numbed
and boreal steel filled their pockets,
with weight like loss: the rush of
fear in a vacuum
Still, nobody screamed
instead, their throats made small alarms,
guttural from behind clamped jaws;
layers of yellowing silt shifting until
they all saw sky
instead, the march of steady breath
fell out of step with each arterial beat;
one by one they hissed like matches
softly dipped in water
ataraxicat 