Preface in perfume. She owned every room,
like a whisper of poetry. Hopeful in youth,
even as she’d cracked spines while hunched over
in the glow of the moon, scanning horizons
for the reprise of beloved roses in bloom.
Hers was the loneliest tune. The paint on the wall,
watching it dry, between the lines of painful withdrawal.
Opiate hits, colder and wet. Learn patience in fall,
cutting letters into trees, immortal frames to recall
all the days that are gone. The pages we turned.
The chapters that ended. Occam’s razors that burned.
And as each plot twists, us vagrants have learned
to head straight at each curve,
to wander under the cover of night,
to lick our fingertips and look for something to find.
A confederacy of hunches with a touch of denial,
she grounded us in fact as fiction muzzled a smile.
Each chilly day muddled with the spice of gin,
squeaking and stumbling through like mice and men.
She whispered prose, as the bell tolls and sun also rises,
shrugging on my slippers, praying for no surprises.
But words fade in direct light. We sway with the moonshine,
something pastoral — American yet chasing a new life.
Reliving the past. Wishing we’re better off.
Refusing conclusions. Past is prologue, sniffing to catch a waft
of that introductory vision that has me skipping the epilogue.
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