Today I became invisible again
To the neighbors. No more peace officer calls,
No letters still forwarded.
The calla lilies have been harvested,
The smiling haulers long since come and gone
Have picked clean even the most haunted and broken
Like filberts from intransigent shells.
In grief all is free, except the ghosts, they're for me.
I piled her clothes on the driveway side
When the rain – forcing tears – wouldn’t cease.
We never spoke of this. She’d never agree
To be extricated thus, her existence
Turned so recently to fact from theory.
It was all that she could do to be imperious
In the face of the horrors she was born into,
To dictate how chaos would be introduced,
How correction on infinite error must continue
Her ghost limb control in ever smaller increments
To keep her dying flame from turning ember.
Every gift, she’d say, opens in the future.
It was beautiful once, all this ugliness,
Perfection, it was, all this waste, as if
The ease of release could erase the past.
What remains of our love was what got in the way,
So well-distilled it was not even poison.
Her logic was always that impeccable,
Every stone turned, examined and returned.
It was almost as if she could finally say
What I'll never know, now that the mask is off
And what's hidden in the dark has no preference.
A new world opens, free of lovers chains
And their burdens of buried resentment.
I never did answer "what is it I want?"
Was it peace in a nest of betrayals?
An honest account of pain? How far
Do I have to get from the crime scene
To find the me who's innocent, before I
Stepped my soul back, and waited for what I called redemption
From the last instruction card in the deck,
Which, in the end, just signalled the game was done.
