I came home and sewed my funeral dress
on; basketballs thudding in the street,
bringing me next
to you, an oasis, underneath
nothing and adjacent to the breeze.
You must have been a sitcom, you could have played
some scene I’d forgotten.
Encountered late night, on a cable channel,
face grainy but restored,
a slight tilt to your head,
voice unmistakable,
hollowed and buried deep
below the wrought-iron tree grate at my core.
In this there is nothing I know
and I am nothing but this vessel
There is never a moment when the things I think and remember
coincide
like today
like pictures on a wall of little girls I never knew
thrust through all reverie, pausing
next to the sarcophagus
I never saw
next to your coffin, the one
that bruised my hip,
The edge, hidden by bunting.
You could have been a passage in a book,
one I kept on my shelf, spined,
one I visited, sometimes,
again and again,
the same pages telling me the same story
the plot missed in repetition, grayed and retold.
If we could pair up,
if we could make diagrams,
dissect the empty night full of hoops and sneakers and dresses
I wish I never wore
There still won’t be
an ending
There still will be
a faded lullaby
the color of the cloth they wrapped you in
the color of the dirt scattered across your grave
the color of my sister’s hands
an episode
I never saw.
04.04.2011
