The hunter is haunted
by images of a home
he once knew, destroyed —
a deconstructed fox hole,
a pile of sticks and stones
patiently waiting for the howl
of a broken, desperate man
to revive and rebuild something
not as revolting as it once was
Somewhere in the distance,
an owl or mourning dove practices
cutting the space with its melancholy
melody, the refrain at once familiar
and strange, echoing a time
between time, nestled in
the crook of calamity
I calmly take it all in, content
to watch the slow unraveling
of a life that isn't mine, one
or two worlds apart yet close
enough for me to realize how
it, too, yearns for another realm,
for a chance to burn the old parts,
to be revived by the only song
desperate enough to crawl
back to the very place
that had destroyed it
I had hoped you were hiding
I waited alone in the sterile room
for the surgery, too stunned to even
consider goodbye. Instead, my legs
shivering against the stirrups, I prayed
hard for a miracle, for a giant "aha!
Just kidding!" moment from the expanding
universe that would never be large
enough to hold space for you. Pity
I received from the ones closest to me,
words murmured to soothe, and I was
grateful — still, in the cloying silence
that crept in months later, I realized:
I alone was left to somehow trudge through
the thick muck of this loss. They expected me
to swim and not sink, and I did, all the while
hoping the currents would pull me under. How
could anyone else truly know what it's like
when your very own body becomes a thief
who turns hateful against you,
prolific cells with cold fury driving your demise,
to snatch up the very thing
you wanted more than life itself?
Lamentations
These days, I am bound
by a tightness in my throat only
offset by forced deep breaths that
inflate my sense of belonging,
at least for a moment. These days,
I feel at once overabundant and lacking
in time: those delicate matchbox moments
that swirl in a never-ending masquerade
of murky glasses and coffee mugs to clearly
show just how not alone you are.
Yet, if I somehow disappeared from
the next afternoon matinee, if my wide
beaming, familiar face no longer
appeared immediately at your front stoop
whenever you rung me to tell me you felt lonely,
would you realize that I was no longer
among the living? See, that’s the funny thing
about the grandiosity of life and its chess moves:
those who coldly push ahead eventually
still end up falling off the board anyway
in blessed descent: arms outstretched,
bloodshot eyes bulging at the basest
seams that swell and threaten to burst
in the most gallant manner atop a carousel
while peering down at those below who
are still most eager to ingest the same candy-
coated curses that no longer consume you
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