Revisionist Poetry – Creepy Island, v.2

Amid the river’s iron breath
a black thumb pins the water—an island
so small the moon forgets to name it.
A single rowboat keeps its back to shore,
paint flaking like old combings of hair.

At dusk, houses on the bank shut their windows
as if to hold in one last good secret.
One dog barks once, then listens; the reeds answer
in wet, patient susurrations.
Children trade coins for bravado and dare each other:
“Go, touch the rusted bell.” They never do.

By midnight a hush tightens like string,
and the island’s low trees breathe like ghosts.
Something moves in the knot of vines—slow, deliberate—
and even frogs change their rhythm to keep time.

If you come close, you’ll hear the thing that isn’t a voice:
a lullaby someone hummed wrong, two notes behind the moon.