They flit like pages or old ghosts
through the dark spaces of your mind,
front to back like a laundry lists of good
memories gilded and soured
both-- by time and retrospect.
They come in little images like behind
the big, blue trash cans on the playground
where Marie kissed you
and you ran away.
The leather seats of
her father's car where McKinley
undressed herself that first time,
belt buckle taut against you hip.

All of them like snapshots
blending upward and forward
toward you until the recent,
fresh and inflamed as if the skin
of some rotten, festered wound.
How you see her here,
sitting there across the
edge of the bed
a million miles away.  
She is salvation if only you can grab her,
but you cannot anymore.
See her in dark hair, tied loosely
back behind her.
See her in anger at the turn of her lip,
sweet flesh-- even as the words sour.
See her in reflections of light
softening her eye against the welling tear
she dares to fall.

Torn-out pages of scripture.
Sad beautiful ghosts that,
if not dead, are far
from here--

And what ought love to do
from a thousand miles
but die.