(Someone must have heard it crash

because it did)

the car collided at midnight

then silence stretched for days.

There were three dead, maybe four.

Names lost to us along with the toxins 
found in their post-mortuary bodies.

We only remember the silence that followed. 

t h e  s i l e n c e 

became an entity,
swallowing the island whole with its unrelenting fog.

It leaked from houses like smoke,

filling the lungs of villagers 

until 

masts clanking in the bay became a hymn of our mourning

playing while last traces of teenage flesh were scrubbed clean from the rocky facade 
by thunderstorms, 
fleeting, and common on the coast.

Even the children hushed themselves,
took a break from their barefooted sand wars to stare out at the tempered sea,

eyes wide with ignorance.

Still, they felt ripples from the collision, 

stirring in their beds

like animals before a storm.