The Buried Moon.
There is no sky.
The snow is black.
Below the rimed earth
yawns a crack

into the deep,
the world below.
We cannot reach her.
Her moan, slow

and keening fills
this barren land 
and spills like lost
light through our hands.

And from the dark,
snuffing our skin, 
the kept-out world
is drawing in.

[SR Mandel is from San Francisco, Boston, and Philadelphia, in that order. Their work has appeared in Goblin Fruit, Stone Telling, Strange Horizons, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, among other venues. They are very interested in things that are both one thing and another thing at the same time. Find them online at @susannah_speaks or at www.srmandel.com]