Maybe a pay-phone in France
would still reach you;
in the South; in the third
or second life. Still then
as a teenager, bloodless
and senseless, skidding
another riven diagram
into the dust. Now even
staggered into fake quietude
I can’t believe there is
no causeway to the dead.
Why should there not be.
I know it is just a zip
in circumstance. Tending June’s
snow driven to musk
and peachlit common rain.
I would rather be studding euros
into a slot, sighing and missing
my tether for living.
Grief’s seam is ever false
to the bereaver, whenever she
returns, to the sleeping
or to the psychotic. Her things
no longer where she left them.
And her children’s closed forms,
like lakes too deep to sound,
or too dull. Love for a while
was the nearest exit,
a problem too wonderful
to solve, or bitter to abandon.
If I could speak I’d ask
what it was you saw
in your dark room again,
at the foot of the bed, or
slumbering beside you?
The dim outline of a preset ghost.
You will never tell me,
even if I could close
the broken skin of heaven
with my mouth. My
streaming teeth. The stealing light,
where everyone emerges
then, like water
travels down alone.
