“The man’s gone, the window cool on my forehead. It doesn’t seem such a big thing to imagine, him sitting out back now and the evening’s coffee warm between his hands. That’s how I’d like it. The light is good of a Sunday evening, the yard like fields I remember, a place I was happy with her. And I hear something that might bring a smile to the neighborhood this time of the day, the sound of someone singing to herself, cleaning a house.”
— David Keller, "Longing", Poetry Magazine, May 1984
We spent the last of summer in the dark, prying open the jaws of the whale only to realize the whale was a simple fish which would turn to wood soon if not for the searing hole in our hearts.
Wiggling toes to know we still got them: lighting a cigarette between the hallux and the pointer to prove we can still kill ourselves this way, foot-to-mouth, ignoring warnings of a sky about to change.
We wish to put the ash back into the firework. Hoped all smoke columns were a sign of something beautiful. Instead we were met with guitars with broken strings; no one left to sing along.
After planting a blue stone we wait for it to grow. Seconds like decades. Concurrently, a car passes and flicks a cigarette out the window, its embers kicking down a slick, potholed road.
With goatheads stuck to our socks and the sky reflecting everything we thought we lost, we take our time with the menu, drink ice water, start believing in the ghosts of mariachis.
The weed sees the shadow of itself as a tree, and a crayon dreams as a Sharpie drawing waves along the kitchen wall. If only the world’s longest showers didn’t smack us all.
