Black streaks slather the sun. The sky’s tooth

has come undone, floats dirtward, away from us.

We follow it, night’s lacquer, until the sun bursts

black over the horizon so fast half of us char

before we find trees to block it.

*

The heavy horizon pulls the earth faster,

the sun gone in an hour. Now the toothless night.

We find the moon later that night. More pink

than white, it is soft in our hands—wet sand.

We tear it apart, tear the already broken moon

into pieces. For our mouths. For our pockets and hollows.

One of us (was it you?) discovers that wringing

the moon, like a neck, yields liquid. We quench.

*

The sun struggles at the edge all day, a day all dawn,

but cannot lift itself into the sky. No rise

or dusk. Finally the horizon frees itself

and the sun falls back out of sight.

We eat what’s left of the half-dead and dying trees,

walk in the dark and sleep on the ground in the dark.

*

With nothing to eat, we walk. With nothing else to find.

We decide to remain on the blackdark dirt

under the blackdark hole-strewn sky.

With nothing to watch, we wait. There is nowhere

to go, nowhere worth going.

We sleep, and as we sleep the horizon swells

on every side. What’s left shrinks.

*

We measure the remaining space by sleeps.

The edge is now four sleeps away, now three.

Two. Even the sky is squeezed, the once-scattered holes

grow closer, then together. A new moon.

One of us (was it all of us?) tries to reach it, to climb

through and out. But it is too far and we are too tired.

The horizon collapses on us

as we start to fall asleep. Into sleep.