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Layers

Vincent P. Désilets

    The stench of rot mixes with fresh cypress.
    Officers trim branches, fingers clasping a secret.
    The captain’s powerless. Longing for closure, dreading the answer.
    Birds chirp their mocking warning.
    Familiar yellow appears through blue-green leaves. A coat.
    Could be anyone.
    Life swarms on bones poking through darkened flesh, through ragged cloth, beneath thick foliage.
    As the path clears, his throat squeezes. Each pruned branch rips a chunk of hope.
    That height, he marked it on the wall on her eleventh birthday.
    Still uncertain.
    Those shoes she left for school with, never to come back.
    A cone drops. The captain too.

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