Mosquito bitten tourists, we ride
the slow crawl from the mainland.
A throng of bodies and voices,
recycled on the air
in unfamiliar languages.
Where the proud threadbare mother,
baby crying, cannot sleep.
A litany of decaying muscles.
Time merges dream
into waking dream.

In the tilted kind of purgatory
where our eight-hour penance
feels like life,
faces blur in the light of passing streetlamps
and burning stars on the wind outside.
We’ll blink at the sun
with a dead man’s eyes
at the end of the line,
astonished at the dawn.
Like moths who love light
but never see the sun.
Too delicate: our wings.
We only come out at night.