She Speaks In A Tunnel

In the tunnel,
she spoke – its processed absence felt
through tiny sound-fractures,
hand claps in echoey miasma.

In the tunnel,
low rumbles of some vague thing or emotion,
variously perceptible owls expected in the
darkness, or through: just visible beyond words.

In the tunnel,
a flap or a hoot, semi-smudged, the ghost of a beak, a
pair of dislocated eyes, the last aspect
to disappear – a trace of yellow, paled.