Revisionist Poetry – Creepy Island, v.5

From the river’s throat a dock-less spine of earth juts up,
moonlight stitching the reed-edges with a thin bright wire.
Windows turn inward like closed mouths; a rowboat hangs idle,
three small shirts looped over its oar — flags for nobody.

Old men on the wharf barter the same two words: “Once.”
The word folds into the nets and floats back hollow.
Rumour runs along the keel, an iridescent seam;
children’s names wash ashore with shells and come away dull.

Night is a watchman who writes names on wet planks,
then lets the ink leak into the current. Beneath the reed-veils
the island keeps a cellar of small betrayals: a matchbox emptied,
a rusted shoe, a pillow stiff with salt — things that speak without tongues.

We cross only in story. Those who go return with their hands over their mouths,
not to hide what they saw but to keep the island’s silence intact —
a silence that keeps the shape of somebody we once loved.