Umbra Noctis

At the shores of a formless boundary

where water cleanses the bodies of the lost

and the stones are bleached under three wandering suns

my mind 

parched  by merciless thirst

drags itself through scorching sands

looking for a nexus

where time and blood collide

so I can crawl back to the womb of night

and be remade in its image.

To be a vast firmament

devoid of the shackles of man and its tongues

free from corporeal burden

eternal, star-stricken and scarred by blades of aurora.

To be cartographies of dead light

a library of echoes,

to be a place

a sanctum for lovers

to be the watcher of a thousand oaths

to be the stillness that seizes the soul.

My tongue cracks in a thousand places

and this heavenly fire

yanks me from the hallucinatory grip of desire

so that I can be another pot in its kiln,

an amphora filled with dust

as hollow as it is useless.