I. C. U.

Ben Merchant

The combined sounds were enough

To make anything difficult but sitting.

And even that was hard if not for the fatigue.

The silence of near corpses, and voices

of mothers reduced to raw emotions

was a clod cover thick enough to block

what little moonlight passed through the venetian blinds.

I licked my lips and refolded my hands,

hoping

that folded hands were the same as prayers

to a God whose love is blind--to some.