"lonely moon"

I'm sorry for the delay on this piece-- I had it written in my notebook yesterday, but I was too lazy to type it up. Today I did that, and also played around with the formatting. I'm very interested in using the structure of the poem to further the theme, and I wanted to play around with that idea. The main theme of this poem is the lonliness and emptiness, so I tried putting extra spaces between words to create that tense, stretched feeling, and to emphasize certain words. This is an experiment for me, so please tell me if you feel it worked or not. Enjoy!

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“lonely moon”

___the wolves perch along the ___bare
bark of the land, sheer
teeth that glint like forest fire
among ___the soldiers of pines flanking
the mountain.

___stand by me, and
our skin hardens into
peaks and valleys, our cells
all beating and panting, every
hair and crevice standing and
shouting for life.

___and the ___atmosphere ___is dust
and campfires, your tongue lights with
crackling embers of the naked
sun, the stark ___gulp of the night,
swallowing

sight. one last glimpse,
you— ___your hair limping around
___your eyes, chubby hands tucked
___in your pockets, the blossom of your small
___mouth stained with blackberry juices and
___whispers that fall heavy and ___stillborn
___into the dry, pine air.

the sky ___cries between
___trees— long and wan, echoing
___with the silent ___crackling aurora
___and dry moans of wolves, rimming
___the chalice of the blue and boiling
___valley ___with burning mountains, lit with
___molten dusk. ___campfires

sprout among the great roots
of the mountain, roaring
with songs and laughter, the curling,
sticky warmth of family, delicious
suffocation of flannel and flesh.

___but out here space is ___rent and
open, humming ___with depth and width.

___stars flood the inches ___between ___us,
universes twirl and ___fall and
sigh ___into burning dust, you sigh
into me, cold ___breath cascading like
an avalanche in the aching

___dark.
wolves yelp and shout
us,

the lonely ___moon.