shot glass
title
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

Holly Wotherspoon


 

Invisible City

Sand swallowed up everything
the plaza where betrayals hung
in the heat all the way to the rotting adobe
where we sweated together
on a too-small mattress
one of us always on top of the other
roof tiles fell without warning
babies never ceased crying for their mothers
even as their mothers carried them in their arms.
We ached inside for those sobbing babies
sores that wouldn't scab. In Playa del Sol
we mixed our cocktails with bottled water
our sweat dripped down onto the cool tile
outside of town, beyond the desert, beyond
the sandy drifts smothering everything

was the sea