A space where nothing is missing
but a flickering memory crosses her
resting face
Your awkward arms in that black shirt
that happy rainy day. You ran through the finish line.
you are so few and far between these days
I almost have to look
Wonder when it fell off, the jacket of mammoth fur I wrapped around myself once
on the sleeve of which I wiped up salty wetness as it poured hard and fast
replaced by angel wings
and then you were but a fragrance here or there
a tiny uptured nose
in the shadows of the night
the flicker of black eyes, full of wonder and peace
staring back at me softy from the pillow
and then a light on perhaps as I walk down a street, or just the quietly persistent aftertaste
which long since lost its sting
when summer's euphonious bird song brought new breath and feathers
and the melancholy, your parting gift, followed your fine example
brown coffee circles
dance on the paper
I look at them now
come back to them later
they mock my erstwhile melancholy, which now appears in a retrospective Bronte-esque patina
I smile a little, trying to divine their secrets
unbeknownst to the Better Self
Mindsight and hindsight dance to their silky slippery sonnet
and the duet's encore is is a construct of a construct, a game of prestidigation, the soul's sleight of hand
a phantom limb
just circles on paper
When I go mad dear friend
Please leave me somewhere happy
in a place where i have so many limbs I can not count them all, a deluded grin
across my face, tales with roguish twists and turns, nonsense or not
and ne're a phantom limb again
in a room where the only shadows are my own
and those of Angel wings
