World Without Footfall(For Lyn) Poem by Dónall Dempsey

The stairs sleep
in the moonlight

(haunted by shadows
& the ghost of shadows) .

They go neither
up...nor...down.

The stairs dream of stillness

of being
perfectly still

in a world without
...footfall.

And yet: my footsteps
awaken it

and it is compelled
to resume being a stairs

taking me up
to an attic window

with a broken latch
twisted shut with twine
& a tangled clothes hanger

where a moon
floats across its pane

as if drowned
& I

cry

at the absence
of you.