We walked by a mound of possum bones
on the way to Meadowbrook Apartments. A rattlesnake slid
across the dike’s padded path & into the tall grass.
Cutting through the old glass factory, I wanted to tell you I loved you,
like the wind wants to sleep after the far-off beating of the hayfields,
but I was tired & needed a hit. I needed a hit like the snow day prayers
we made as kids, clasping a wooden spoon under our pillow.
Those bones no longer feared the swollen earth, the raging sky,
but I feared you in a small town & the ghost
you said you saw at midnight, who walked past
your bathroom door as you polished your work boots.
At the plywood door of Alderman’s apartment, a narrow wedge
of light lay on the pines in the distant mountains.
You would’ve thought we were pigs, our knock a power ram,
the way his girl pulled up the sawed-off from beside the couch
& turned up both barrels. This was your idea, this buy,
& somehow, I loved you even more. We just wanted a few grams,
clean as marrow emptied of everything
but spillways of darkness & a few flecks
of buckshot. Despite the utter stillness of the room,
a mirror on the far wall slipped, shattered, & shards of us pollinated the floor.
She took a drag then fired twice.
Your ghost, you had said as we crossed Brisco Bridge, was gloom
sidling into your bedroom. An old woman with black braids
& a face obscured by tobacco smoke. Every night, as if on repeat,
her lungs gave out:
your bed creaked & you heard a sigh.
When you went in—what was there? An empty room, an unmade bed.
One round exploded
into the plaster wall. The next, a halo-flash into your hip. You buckled to the floor.
If we wanted, we could have called this home. A thousand reflections of your life.
The next day it felt the same. But now, it’s an empty apartment
filled with deaf ringing. Now,
it is something in common. & like any old story,
we retell it at bars & around bonfires. We move close to hide from it.
This night returns to me often. You – on a carpet
dashed with cigarettes & weed stems, a black rope of blood flowing
out of your green wildgrass hip & around your leg.
I keep wanting to grab hold of your hand,
& every time find another reason to play dead.