retrospect

I track your hauntings with wax and candles. I follow your absence with pen ink and lined paper, curving these rough notions around your paces, trying to find a chain that fits. You dissolve, moon bright then closet dark. You linger like a fever then disappear like a promise sworn. I take your measure with tape and rough fingers, I taste your meaning in the words you scatter like funerary ash. Somehow I always use my teeth, finding you in these pervasive syllables and endless nights. Small bites and strange flavors, the story of your life as I would write it down.

There are always labels there to read. The smiling scars and the delirious curve of your spine. The way your skirts would cling to your thighs, the way your eyes would follow mine while I stared and stared. Rain on the window and the Christmas strings of the freeway winding on and on. The way everything you wore was in love with you, how your clothes would sigh so softly as you shed them without a second thought. The map of you beneath my touch, the only reading I can not forget.

I remember your doors and your stairways. I remember the street lights that shone too bright and the car that was always broken into. Cigarette glow and smoke unwinding. The wish I couldn't stop making just seeing you there. I drive past the places you abandoned. I ghost through the business of my betters, a hollow gaze, an empty threat. I see a light on, and you are always there. Time left in the back seat, time watching me through my rear view mirror. I touch the air where you should be. I write it down, the mystery of this empty. The fullness of your insistence pressing against my senses, even when you are gone.