Even the poets can't define absence,
that stilling of breath's metronome
in a room grown so quiet
dust can be heard settling
between the floorboards and the walls.
This, across the ocean,
this, the other side of the world,
but a human chain
of ghosts holding hands
feels when one lets go,
when a colored flag
is loosed from its mast
and blown out to the whirlwind
of unimaginable wherever.
I wish you were still here
as trite as it sounds
it's a phrase tattooed
inside so many lips,
mouths passing the smoke of your memory
between kisses and sucking draws.
We live for the potential
of space occupied by a body,
of voices in the static
screaming welcome home,
of clean soapy perfumes
weaving through the damp and mildewed morning,
of words we pull like frayed cords
from the ropes of our limbs,
veins threaded into lassos
that we use to catch our fleeing spirits
and pull them back to the ground.
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