Spirited

Quiet, ever so hushed and calm,
The silenced await, solemn and patient.
Bated breaths and muffled sighs,
Their rustles deafening, the whimpers blunt.

Stray not over the dizzying emptiness,
Step not on that fresh mound.
Their anguished cries may claim you,
Cries of the stricken, the slaughtered, the drowned.

The Lark

When I was a child, I was friends with a lark. It was no ordinary bird, for it could talk. And by talk, I mean human speech. This isn't one of those stories where in the end, the narrator turns out to be an animal or some inanimate object.

I was speaking about the lark, yes.