Retreat

There stands a child
in no man’s land,
a man in no child’s land.
Hard to say: mine child 
or hologram man, lifting
and flickering every age
from the tilted page of earth.
You shift, pace, calculate
the best route to the other 
side past barbs where
lives the enemy—a mirror, 
a word, a job, a meal, 
a gentle touch, a circle 
of sober men talking.
You whisper retreat,
worried your voice will trip
the wire in the ear,
the brain, take you both
out. Your voice is not 
a hologram. You watch,
wordless, beg the cells
of him made half of you
to defuse, to move,
not move, and the silence
is a yellow fog you’ve
no mask for.