Night Air

These are not all lovers,

these half-shapes.
When they reach for each other
their teeth leave marks,
they spend
in each other's blood
something beyond love.

They are insects
and what is worse
they are insects that feed upon
their own decay.
They have pursued reality
from some
worn out maggot hell
and there is
no saving them;
there is
no yesterday
when they come down.

One day, all suddenly over,
they find themselves alone.
The rocks,
for a change,
have worn down the waves.

There is
danger in sanity
there is danger
in not understanding loss.

-Susan Musgrave

Photographs by Brittany Markert