The Night Is Cold and Loud

The night is cold and loud and cannot see. The children are up in bed tonight, eyes on eyes, immobile with the dark or tears flicker. Her voice shrill between the twelve tolls. Porcelain, alabaster and pure, dissipates across the linoleum tiles where it haunts beneath the fridge. Her cheeks, a blossoming rose. The children are up in bed tonight; it is cold, too cold, with no body and their faces hot. Her wound hair, a taut gold, he said would last eternal. The kettle steady and piercing, wailing and unremoved, pours heat into the air. He is calm between the seconds. The children are up in bed tonight, their noses ripe, their wails are rich and broken. His feet are dull upon the wood. The porcelain is long in dust; all sullen draped like pupil-less and silent eyes. The night is cold and loud and cannot see.