Ghost

it’s almost eight.
they will be here soon.

doing push-ups on the floor,

turning your questions
inside out,

28, 29, 30 ...

trying to undo the answers
you knot me with.

the house

feels heavy,

like a thousand nights
spent sweating
inside a packing crate.

these alabaster walls,

still wet high
with your misty sighs.

my ears,

still blood-warm
where your whispers bit.

oh, this sweet distance ...

this ether between heartbeats
where darkness sows
chloroform seeds ...

and time? time is just
a crafty old river --

promises destiny
down its course,
but drowns our boats
before we even get close.


the door’s flung open;

they are here.

an inspecting wind also arrives
in swirling coat-tails;

they are here.

swiftly, like ants
without existential angst,
they set to work.

curtains curled aside,

the ribbed-iron shutters

spit you out,
off the flower-pot lined balcony,
down into the lily garden,
onto the streets.

slanting sunbeams

puncture the eastern windows,
releasing
the pressure of your presence.

this refrigerated togetherness
finally starts to perish.

the bed --

beachhead

where spiders crawled
on the sands,

where habits teethed
into salty syndromes --

stands straightened,
bedspread conforming,
the mattress blank and shapeless --
a stretch of windswept coast.

where we lay watching movies,

the carpet

is now swept
free of consequence and memory,
out into the cold February morning,

where you stand
framed in the doorway,

dissolving,
disintegrating

into dust distilled sunlight.


and so,

after the kitchen
has had its teeth picked,

after the rooms have come clean
and the corners have confessed
their claustrophobia,

after our conversations
have gurgled down the drain,

they leave

the house

an antiseptic tomb,
a skeleton ship,

and i sit hunched on the footsteps,

mourning,

turning your questions
outside in,

hoping to find you hiding
somewhere in the folds
of your words,

trying to exorcize
the answers you haunt me with.