102/365 - 113/365 || Twelve Conversations with a Winter Moon

The analogy
should be made obvious. Clear.
The words in the book
become the voice in your head.
My voice repeating my words.

•
You hold a pebble.
The pebble aches to increase
in size, move beyond
perimeters of your hand,
or notions of being owned.

•
Sometimes you appear
after a long night drinking,
blurry-eyed. Wrinkled.
A dark edge of unshaven
whiskers on your curved features.

•
What was— is now gone—
burnt out embers, cold ashes.
Circumstances change
overtime— the stove once hot
transforms to a stone-cold shell.

•
— and even your eyes
carry the ghost impressions
of your former past.
Shadows which cling at your heels
distort in the morning light—

•
A shirt lies empty,
forgotten on the unmade
corner of the bed—
transforms to ghost memory
or a mere speculation—

•
As an empty plate
left on the table’s worn edge—
unspoken symbol
or expectant metaphor—
you pause—an apparition —

•
A lamp left burning
on the darkening side street,
as unfinished poems
piled on a desk top by
the window with open blinds.

•
Outside each window
your face shifts between the glass,
a ghostly voyeur
witnessing each falling word,
each failed gesture between us.

•
Other times you fade
in the background as a blur
in a photograph,
a forgotten phrase pausing
on the tip of a blunt tongue.

•
Like the time you tripped
walking up the stairs, drunk on
experience and
returning home with someone’s
breath still warm inside your mouth—

•
You linger palely
resting on the horizon
as a vague notion,
or a sight hesitation
I cover up with one hand.