My life began and ended
then began again.

Old relatives and friends
came and went

like images scrolling
on a computer screen.

It’s green glow spills onto my skin
and into this dark room

where time stands still
and clothes pile in the corner,

while outside perennials bend
and open their petals

towards the sun
to swallow its gaze,

then bow back down
in respect for the ghost moon

who sends spirits that fold lines
into the faces of those in sleep.

They play with our dreams
like wooden marionettes

and smooth the edges of memories
just as bone dulls a steel blade.



I’m sure they have visited us,
whispered some secret out our mouths.


As I sit here, I try to place us
somewhere between the cycle

of day and night, between
pixelated moments encoded

in gigabytes on my hard drive.
I place a number on a virtual file

to hide it from prying hands
that come like a mist in the night.

Safe between the ones and zeros
and electric highways of a computer chip,

not so different from those in my brain
where nerves endings could zap

me back to a time when I knew
the dip and curve of your collar bone,

the taste of menthol on your breath,
those late nights when we first met

and fell asleep to the sound of the dogs barking
as the neighbor’s children left for school.

i want to split my shadow from my body
to feel the peel of its black scab

press my soul smooth
under the hot heel of an iron

i flip through old notebooks
each page an incomplete image

i see a child smearing paint
to feel it glide beneath his fingers

with no need to believe
in the colors that swirl under his hand

he only loves the stubborn way
they gum up in his palm

i see myself as a blank page
waiting to be written into motion

as if some line of dark ink
could form a portrait

each turn of phrase a brush stroke
thick with oil, the heavy layers piled on

i see a man awoken in a dark room
dinner is over and daylight passed

through the window snow falls in clusters
and hits the ground with tiny puffs

the house is empty except for muddied prints
tracked in by someone’s shoes



he traces them down the stairs
out the door as they wind through the yard

past the wooden fence that borders the tree line
as they are slowly swallowed by the whiteness

“The street is dangerous”
the boy says to his sister
in hand at the crosswalk.

It is 2pm on the corner
and the school kids
begin to pass the cafe.

Strollers and stragglers
others bounding alongside
their tired mothers.

Some gaze upwards
stretching their arms
towards buildings and lights,

things they cannot
reach but hope
to one day grasp.

Others absorbed
into small devices
held in their hands,

things they cannot
touch but will try to
for maybe a long time.

So many come still
all at waist height
in their multicolored jackets,

Pokemon backpacks,
and Spiderman sneakers
that drag along the sidewalk.

And finally the little girl
who touches all she passes —
the iron fence, my chair,

the table — as if the world
only becomes real
under her palm.