Not an inert indication

When your mom died
you asked the moon to give your mom back.

Maybe it did. The cat she loved stuck around. Nature, a clever cat
crouching in prowl of itself. Eating itself raw

sometimes cooking itself not exactly like that bullet
you saw screaming into your mom just as if it were entering you.

Both of you collapsed.
Both of you rose again. You, walking in the dark

with just as much as the moon's arm
to guide you through the eye of the jungle

pulsing creatures called visions
captured in radiation. I can see what happened to you

when I look into your eyes. Your mom, the moon,
lit for you. Watching you watching yourself. Silently.

Thomas Osatchoff, together with family, is building a self-sustaining home near a waterfall. Recent work has appeared in FOLIO, Penumbra, Perceptions Magazine, and elsewhere.