Well, we go on -- one hand floating weightless as a balloon,
the body pulling itself downward again.
Our bones can only be lifted so much by this wind,
Though a residue remains, like soot from
a long-neglected fire or a thumbprint on the soul,
and it belongs the way a bruise belongs,
the way our shadows spark and smolder without us,
solitary, when shut away for the night.
Today I walk with neither haste nor direction,
the sex and the sorrow of sad letter days
discarded, the fact of my name, age, and profession
lost to the angular wind. I carry your words
in one pocket, your silence in the other,
past the once-familiar storefronts of our past,
the soft glow of your childlike face gazing back at me
and back upon itself, a foreign postage stamp
on an antique postcard you bought but never sent.
How can I answer now, knowing this business of words,
this stooge's religion, to be diversion at best?
How can I speak when addressing you now means
addressing any tree, or cloud, or patch of grass?
You have grown vast by way of vanishing.
You always said it was an art, a trick you could not unlearn.
But we go on, each in our separate ways.
Our bones can only be lifted so much by this wind.
But the body is such a stubborn guest,
unwilling to leave, despite the late hour.
We may as well settle in, make up the spare room.
