Prompt poem (four)

(What will you do with a scrap of paper, a sharpened pencil, and the moon?)


My prison window shows a patch of sky,
So every night I draw a picture of the moon.

Shape after shape, marching on the wall,
They grow, then wane, then swell to full again.

New-moon nights, I draw a patch of black,
Scribbled to reveal the stonework underneath.
Full moon is a blind white eye,
Gibbous a cut potato.
Crescent moon is a knife.

After a few months, I stop drawing shapes.
Instead I write moon-words, one each night:
Pearl, pregnant, slab, sickle, thumbnail, coal.
Then back:
Slash, feral, howl, afraid, astonished.

Word by word, I limn the poem of sky.
Of my prison. Of my guilt. Of my missed oblivion.