When we move to the high city, I cannot sleep for the tremor though my pillow. For years, the river feeds me color: boats of raincoats, herding lights of law, kayaks strung like beads. You did not tell me what they meant, the fire beams of propellers shone down the bridge. Tonight a new beam rests toward me, white rush without struggle remains through the tide. Across the river, the cement walls on four stories of a tall, dark building have been pushed out. All the light that fills the twenty floors below falls down to the water. And we think at night when it comes to us: this light is so like the moon. Here we will never see the lit circle slide off its base into shadow at the back of this building. In this window, a thousand rooms are the dust of stars or there are none at all. This is the moon’s light and the water is the sea, your breath that clouds the night all the warmth to me.
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Alison Angell received a Master’s of Letters in Creative Writing from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. She currently lives in Brooklyn, where she works as a marketing manager. Her poetry has appeared in the Washington Square Review andThe Echo, and she blogs about her travels at http://forinstants.com/.