Moon House by Laura Stringfellow

The room is a plastered eggshell.
Canopy and curtain, white as ash,
blanch with regret. The carpet swells,
an ocean of red, greedy with its own
making, while the mirror stares blankly
at the wall in pity.

The little girl thinks of the ghost
down the hall, the carpet the color
of berries to the point of rotting.
She dreams albinos, white lashes,
a small drop the color of garnet.
Sap of cut alder.

She thinks that the sea swells under her,
that she is the moon rising.

Laura Stringfellow writes both verse and prose poetry and hails from the muggy strangelands of the Southern US. Her work has appeared in literary journals and magazines in the US, UK, and Ireland, including Coffin Bell: a journal of dark literature, Déraciné, Right Hand Pointing, Ephemeral Elegies, and The Lake.