traces

Each day I wake to ridiculous images, with the obstinance of ash tugging at the far end of the incense, the memory holding down the ghost. The story that it never was, the way I shape my lack and want. A mistaken meteor for the star of opportunity, a whim that has you by the scruff. Polarized between the shoulders, spin’s two cents against the probability fizzle, less and less to love. Each day the storm drags at my bones, this ghost of lick and spittle, every prayer I ever put you through. Nothing so solid as an absence, nothing so ringing as the rain. A smile that has forgotten where memory is everything, a magnet dragging a trail of sparks.

That’s not the bouquet you’re spitting, the branches shedding blossoms down your throat. All those years and only bruised bones and spilled salt, the passion of the sand, the kiss of the sea. The stacks of schemes and dishes, the grease glistening on your chin, these seances of steam and dusk. The mirror fixes its eyes upon you, and you pin its gaze at the wings. The press of now, the pull of yes, the light before the knowing. Always where the ghost goes, never by the book. Oh the words, but also where you look. 

This is the problem with a trainwreck, it’s coiled through the collateral. This is the trouble with a shipwreck, you’re forever what you were. Fires given and fruit offered, the afterglow of the more you know, the burning bite of wisdom always a slither in out in the weeds. You wait and wait for you want, you move capricious through the life you’re given. Sticking to the myths of the constellations, stirring the embers of the all that’s left, I drag the ghosts by their chains. The spell threaded through the blood, the forests and mountains blinded by sun and snow, eyes robbed of every gem a thousand graves ago. These dreams ripped out by the root, your beauty a lack that grounds me, fixed to the ash heap of an afterglow.