Postcard from a Past Life

"We must not touch our idols, the gilt comes off in our hands." -Flaubert

The wind blows open the doors
Only to expose the emptiness beneath,
The way the paintings mirror
What makes the floorboards creak.

For there is nothing in here to remember;
All victories were defeats, at most,
Even those we choose to explain us
Only show we fear ourselves more than ghosts.

Only ghosts look past the deed to the result,
Others just absolve their own mistaken selves
And take up with another opaque text,
Leaving us to echoing walls and gilded shelves

To do with as we wish, if only we knew how
To make a mark on well-worn floors,
To make a sound in silent air,
To not care about the marks that came before

And what they might have meant. And how
We cannot yet be real until we save them,
Perfecting and correcting what’s already dead,
To be recognized as alive before them

When they don’t move. For fear that we
Will end up as they seem to be or less,
Forgotten, by fickle light that led us nowhere,
We follow Hades’ shades, we, the heaven-fresh.