There’s Something in the Wall
A humming runs down dry cracks in the paper’s skin
and hoping it’s braille I spread my fingers thin, thumbing
for eye sockets, nostrils, follicle hairs
but you always did look to the sky, saying he lines the crown
molding, dots, zits on the popcorn ceiling, swarms, cobwebs, and dust.
Tell me now, sweet disciple, does noise alone prove life
after death?
Feeling nothing, I lean onto the shoulder of the window-
pane, and seat my ear against the wall. A shrill cry runs out
from under the paint and plays about my ear. Someone
is in here.
The voice is sweet honey, vowels pouring consonants but
what’s this she said? The woman now shivers and whispers my name, she
warns someone is coming. Yes, someone about the doorframe.
The floorboard whines as I inch closer, touching my lips
to the vibration, inhaling sweet breath through the wall, but
then quiet footsteps ask, ‘What’s this you’re doing?’
‘I’ve found God,’ I say, ‘and she’s stuck here, in this wall.’
Nora Smith is a senior at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, SC, pursuing a degree in English with a minor in journalism. Her poetry has appeared in numerous on-campus publications in addition to the MoonStone Arts Center’s New Voices Fall 2025. Her academic work centers on creative writing and journalism, and in her free time she loves rainy days, collecting antiques, and bingeing documentaries of all sorts.
