Auspices of Transience
He is a refugee from the city of hash and twigs.
The suitcase he carries is half-empty.
She was grown in a glasshouse fueled by brimstone and burnt words.
The ancient heat warms her back from afar.
He rubs coconut oil into callus each time he rests.
His scarred soles show routes traced through ash and sand.
His path leads to the last fringe of trees to circle the earth.
She drifts past buoyed by a salted breeze.
Her limbs trail dry tendrils of root that cry hymns to the sky.
Her vertebrae bear faded anchors in blue.
In leafy green shadow his weary inertia recedes.
Her joints are pomegranate seeds popping.
Time stops as eyes meet under the watchful gaze of the birds.
Following a transient childhood, Elosham Vog came of age as a stranger in the surreal spaces of the American midwest and west coast. He now lives and writes in Norwich. His work is forthcoming in Lighthouse.