Still life

Memory arrives in ripples,
interlaced, analogous to moonlight.
It fills the room
with silver and glitter.
The air glistens.

A dreamer leans into the still life,
her gaze fixed on pomegranate seeds,
on a Victorian knife penetrating
the scarlet flesh,
on the glistening glass
that seems almost to sing.

It is an innocuous moment.
Until something begins exploding,
quietly, inwardly.

The dreamer touches the textures
as if they were an invocation,
as if the scattered objects
might answer her back,
terrifyingly alive.

And in their mute arrangement
she feels the room looking back—
each object lit from within,
until some buried scream
shatters the silence.