Tuesday 1: 37 Am Poem by Tony Walton

She had moved to her bedroom
almost a year ago,
existence: it deepens
like a coastal shelf

It is now 1: 37 a.m. and she
hovers over a laptop and

scrolls through the faces
embedded in rows of squares,
each person digitally trapped
in windows that cannot open.

A New Years Eve Party:
Her mother looks out in the photo,
as if the photographer
is saying something complimentary,
she holds a beer, her father is holding
a glass of wine.

A day at the beach:
Camera in front of her, Ocean behind her,
Her eyes are wet and still, a boy dozes
next to her, the tide came in later.

A snapshot of a marriage:
Michael is starting to turn his head
a little, with his eyes looking slightly
to the side. Was he beginning to
leave her?

She wants to open these frames,
stacked in towers, straight down
and across, and let the people leap out,
one by one, but to where?

The light from the screen
pours over her head, through her
hair, down her body and
forms a puddle around her.

She cannot hear the faces screaming
her name from the computer,
their sounds drown in the fluorescence
as she reflects in this light and then
becomes It.

And this light floats upwards
filling all the shadows and
outwards escaping through the darkness
like a summons to the white spaces beyond
this narrow focus

to where she imagines to find herself
among the pale weeds and the sands
trying to blossom