I sometimes ponder
of a phone call that will never be
of silence stretching between two receivers
of a heavy sigh that exhales
years’ worth of air caged in the lungs

Yes, I’m still here
How have you been?
How is life?
How many laugh-lines did the corner of your eye accumulated?
How many past mistakes still drag around your tongue?
How many days since than have drained onto your windowsill?
How many nights were spent sleeping at the foot open front-gates?

Am I as you remember?
Are we where you imagined us to be
back then, some years ago
when both our paths diverged
when all we left behind
was dust and a sense of waste,
and a pair of phantom us, gazing onward
that shared the same time and space

Yes, I am here, but different
which may describe you too
no wonder, since passing time
kept kneading us like clay
and all our efforts to keep straight
were all for naught, we are astray

But
sometimes I still ponder
if thing did not transpire
if times unraveled could be wound up
and knotted, at that single point
then moving forward, just maybe
both of us were different now
but different altogether

rusty dusks

leave twinges

of sunlight that

may not lift from

where they lie again.

shadowed corpus

growing late to rise--

the psudeonymn

of the last stranger.

revealing what was

so perfectly hid away--

delivered by the cost of

articulation.

bared--that's all, who's to

say?

as no one can see what that

bareness saw.