I have to stop chasing you around the yard.
The night air was thick as black fur.
Your ghosts, how far out on the property they scented.
Do we feed our shadows enough?
My bones have been pale these days.
It feels comforting to be empty.
This is where the barn is you said.
You moved the salt shaker into position
on the checkered table clothe. The ketchup bottle was the gas station
five miles away, the sugar dish was Lake Hollow, which brought with it a sigh,
after little Sophia, whom I'd met only once in Autumn, walked out,
unattended into the pines and drowned,
only to be found by a young fishing couple
three weeks later, her feet had tangled in her thick red hair.
.
You continued saying things that spit up like paint splatters,
You had mapped the table as western Dakota.
How tall can this ceiling go
in the green exaggerated cigarette fog?
I look out the window and watch a dump truck
empty a trash bin across the street and think of french toast
and powdered sugar
and all the different syrups that come with the table.
My yard needs work, I said. You sit the mountain in your hands down
and looked up - The weeds are overgrown, I said. There are abandoned bird's nests'
in the space where the roof meets the gutter, I said.
And here you are -
late at night, lofty, your red polyarthritis rimmed eyes
blank.
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