I am soliciting compliments from the bone china scattered around me in the moonlight— a fragile and brittle nocturnal waif influenced by the silver glow
of a full moon. abandoned at a dinner table —al fresco— I am left with prayers and questions which whisper out of my cracked throat, staining the air with barely audible sobs that are cruelly scorned by the sugar cubes
so arrogantly cheerful and sparkling
in the night light. and now I am chasing shadows through dark hedges— they shapeshift and vanish from between my clutching fingers like the fluttering ghosts of bats
or discarded memories. this cloak of trancelike illumination is an opiate to my soul causing hallucinations I desire to stir away, like sugar dissolving in hot tea— but I have lost my silver teaspoon and I cannot find it in the long grass beneath me.