Bare skeletons cast their shadows
from your temporary closets, and bruise
your casual grins with their bleached-bone fists.
You left
here this morning with a carry-on
just to find three bags checked in your name.


Someday your luggage will know
continents, leaving trails
of letters, love songs and photographs.
You will not see these places,
these ancient beauties,
like she did, through the dust
of your travels
beaten grey from army green foot lockers.


Little white tags crumble dates
and loneliness into your sheets.
Your smiles come slower; your tendons ache
in their restless sleeps.
The years of calloused fingers
fumbling latches in the dark
leave your nails jagged
and ******.


But you carry her voice in your suitcase always
knowing her weight would sink into your bones.