believe me when i say

The edge of dusk fades slowly into night.

The people in the house have disappeared.

A bedroom shudders with a thunderous clock

as moonbeams gleam and looming shadows cross.

Sounds issue from the basement for no reason.

Still burning in the widow’s nest, one light.

There is no breeze. There is no weather here.

I swear, a chair up in the attic rocks

where mirrors search for faces they have lost,

and if you watch the walls, you’d see them breathing.

Will Cordeiro has work published or forthcoming in 32 Poems, AGNI, Bennington Review, Best New Poets, Pleiades, and The Threepenny Review. Will won the 2019 Able Muse Book Award for Trap Street and is co-author of Experimental Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024). Will co-edits Eggtooth Editions and lives in Guadalajara, Mexico.