grief has always felt dumb inside me
dumb as drinking egg nog no
dumb as slurping sky no
dumb as gulping the river that walks me home no
all of this swirling
and now I see I must have been
mistaken
here in southern Illinois
under the unlikeliest of skies—
Xmas: 60 degrees and rainy—
like ice clinking inside Santa's busted skull
I sit clinking against the weather
of your absence
while the weather in my voice—
swath of your eye shadow black streak
a mystery asleep in the overgrown pine grove
(sleeping a sleep old as hills)—
half-moon howls:
Michelle! —report?
I am on very low sleep
so if I've already asked tonight I apologize
(it seems like everything is so everything
but I don't quite fit where you are
and it's a bit maddening)—
Michelle!
I must also apologize
for November
—it has taken me so long to start again
I deeply regret but I am glad I feel this way:
because I try to pry open your eyes
failing so tirelessly you feel at home
here in my life
Now when I'm smoking my last
Christmas cigarette in my mother's
garage messy with broken-down
boxes and empty paint cans before
heading north to Illinois I imagine you
sitting in that dark three-car garage
you often told me about in your long-
fingered letters the archive of emails
I've been excavating in short trips
between short trips to the coffee shop
the liquor store on the county line
the graveyard all the light we cannot
see the new mall where most folks
in this small Arkansas town carry home
something like god in shopping bags
to pile beneath the twinkling tree
but when there is no atonement for how
small everything inevitably becomes
it drives me to smoke another cigarette
to get in just one more smoke before
attempting again to leave behind what
will always travel with me but when
I light another cigarette I'm reminded
again of the pile of ashes it seems
we somehow both knew needed sifting
for seeds to keep going even though
I never gave it a name but when
I imagine you alone in that garage that
dark garage with its massive fan
saving you from the mean Florida heat
even though you are gone you are
growing larger behind the screen I see
you behind the light of your laptop
aglow with every flick of your cigarette
the used butts piling up beside you
an unlikely totem a song for giving up
everything else you said but I wish
we could share a smoke instead of this
though we've never touched
I pledge allegiance to the image
of the hand holding yours
as you run from the movie theater
through pouring rain
I have faith in a philosophy of blood
late evening brings
here your backyard angel
braids her blonde hair by the pond
at the bottom of the hill
paints her nails with blue eyes
wings and fur
I name the story of this noise nightly
until there are no more
lit with windows white as bone
the moments of your life I long for
float out on the pond
behind your ghost like ghosts
that have become my pets
I believe in the history of this dream
that never happens
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