Each little life is like the afterimage
of a long-dead star;
a scar half-healed that aches
before the coming of the rain.
She laughs the way her mother used to.
A heaving thing, as if her joy could rip apart
her lungs and scatter them into the sun.
He weeps the way his brother did before
they carried him away and closed his
muted eyes one final time.
She gets all quiet when the twilight comes,
and once I heard her muttering of how
her father’s eyes were golden when he died.
He smiles at the cappuccino cup,
and speaks at length of summer evenings on his
grandmother’s porch.
She reads a lover’s name in some old, battered book,
adding to its stains
the painted silver of her eyes.
Our lives are mingled things.
Each minute soul comprised of old
beginnings.
Walking reiterations,
soft shades of memory and song
and quiet darkness.
And all our joys,
and every shuddering breath
we take was born in some cold ancient
place our bones do not recall.
We sleep and wake, and sleep and wake, and sleep and wake—
a line of deaths made easier by resurrection.
She laughs the way her mother used to—
He weeps the way his brother did—
She gets all quiet when the twilight comes—
He smiles at the cappuccino cup—
She reads a lover’s name in some, old, battered book—
They watch and recollect the spirits
of ones who came before,
looking for comfort in the smallness of that eternity.
Lista de imágenes:
1. Madison Carroll, "Please Excuse the Mess", de la serie Still Life, 2014.
