After you leave me
I walk through the neighbourhood.
The owls are unlatching their wings,
curtains peeled to reveal
cups on the draining board,
a silver-framed bride and groom
waving from a deep-shadowed porch.
If I can’t grow old with you
I’ll be your ghost.
It’s takeout night.
I follow you as you carry
steaming sacks of sesame
noodles, one for each name.
Over a chair your wife has thrown
a dark red shawl, on the table
placed a bowl black
as the bark of a tree.
Her face is flushed with steam.
She pulls chopsticks from
paper wrappers and tears the
birchwood apart. Now they’re
a pair. Other ghosts swim by,
gabbling in patchwork fields
about cabbages and onions.
Not one steals my sadness away
or hears the rain on the skylight.
Perhaps when you’ve passed
it’s possible to have a good time,
be a ghost who lies down.
I had other ideas. I float
to your bedroom to fan
a hand on your pillow, measure
its cold impression of absence.
It’s the width of your throat.
How benevolent I was,
to let you go.
Published in The Dawntreader 073, available from Indigo Dreams.
