The paintings for day’s ekphrastic challenge are Macedonian balcony by Terry Chipp and Domoren en dromers by Marcel Herms.

Nightmare

it’s not safe out there, the parents say, too high, the ironwork too open, the façade is crumbling. Don’t go out, they say to the twins, who peer with thin white faces out through the window that is never cleaned, across the street where the reproachful windows glitter, the ones that saw. Don’t go out, like your brother did, climbed the fancy ironwork and fell. Don’t go out. But they leave the window open, as if to tempt them, the little girls who are left, the ones they would have offered in his place
dreaming is drifting
on the dark waves
of sleep