Horizon, unfulfilled by Keerthisri Kannan (14, New Jersey)

I am standing where the horizon struggles to breathe
on the hour of gold, where the sea winks before
breaking the rising dusk into wishbones, all of them.

the last of the light sends tremors through my veins,
sends tremors through the sea I once called my temple.
then it fades altogether in a tired burst of serotonin.

I feel my tears feeding the growing moon,
but I am too tired to wonder what it will give me in return.
is the night not cold, I want to ask the ghost standing beside me--

—or can you not feel it?

sometimes I feel the sun nibbling at my ankles--
like invisible fish, attracted to an unknown force in my silhouette.
let’s call it gravity, reminiscing the days when laws still held true.
let’s call it gravity, and pretend that the time we defied it
was just a fever dream.

I hear the ghost hands churning the sky
tick tock, tick tock,
until it falls to the ground in wisps, transcending divinity.
it is rather poetic how light and serotonin exist,
but only in wishbones lost to the rising tide.
no, it is not poetic; it is the lack of poetry.