What Kind of Scream

Three AM, the kind of dark

that holds its breath.

Then a sound,

unwound itself from miles off,

a rising knot,

not police, not fire, not

the low, quick moan of an ambulance.

Something else.

It climbed, a sick dog's cry,

thinning out, then thickening,

a broken record playing

a new tune for the end of things.

It didn't stop. It just

got smaller.

A thread pulled back

into the cloth of night.

Leaving me with the silence,

worse, because I couldn't place it.

A question with no throat.