Dotty screws the pen lid,
puts the pen down, folds
her hands in her lap. *****
has finished his poem, he

is now silent, his muse has
gone. She watches as her
brother sits back in his chair,
pushes his fingers through his

dark hair and sighs. That makes
her almost cry, that poet muse
going like that, him sitting there,
face empty, sighs leaving him

instead of words. Tonight she
will enter it all in her journal,
after cocoa and a biscuit and
*****’s kiss and him gone off

to bed, humming to himself.
She will sit by lamplight, take
out her pen, and write on the
clean page, how he wrote,

what he wrote, the words,
the muse, the leaving of him.
She will leave out the kiss,
the embrace, the seeing each

other face to face. ***** hates
writing things down, he just likes
to sit when the words come and
he can speak them and let Dotty

write the words in the air floating
there. He gets up from his chair,
paces the room, his hands behind
his back, his words gone, his mood

dark, becoming black. Dotty looks
at her hands, entwines her fingers,
makes a church, makes a steeple,
looks inside, sees ink stained people.