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.
