Let Me Explain
How there have been whole days
spent feeling on the verge of tears
that never surface—a twinge held
in the chest. Pressure behind the eyes.
How it might start with a brilliant
September sky because such a sky
once cracked open and the world
would never be right. How it never was.
How shame is a sunburned face,
humiliation a fever—dread trying
to leave the body through a door
on fire. Any door. How the only way
not to say goodbye is goodbye.
Say I love you. Say see you soon.
Never I’ll miss you. Never don’t go.
How calendars stack up faster than
hard drives, faster than winters of
blankets and a forest of silent
Christmas trees. How I have searched
for the ghosts of people still alive.
Not their ghosts, but our distant history
and never future and oh
please not goodbye. Not that.
It is not a wasted life, this
searching for the words.
