creases

like this-
barely shadows
thin clouds across
the sun

in a palm

and a brew
of lightning on
night sky
or love in sudden
tense regard,
bright and bitter

in the doorway
waiting to go
or leave

is how I remember.

Ghost in the door,
palm with its
reminders,
a mouth
closed
too tight-

all a storm
dark and a little
sweet
in its making
somewhere
along the Atlantic.

And this,
the reason
to go when I ran,
maybe
yellow could be
like dahlias
and black just
professional attire/

not reminders
to re-mind again
that the cracked
walk, the fractured
frown following –
a memory of
monsters

of grief and
abandonment

now held
in the bones that
must be un-done
and how tiring.

Could sing
unkempt and
broken vowels
like the hair that
wasn’t combed and
spoke instead
that the heart
is red, and bloody
but so quietly

and of fiery dreams
set ablaze
to burn hotter
than the very thing
that could have
taken them away
if not taken in a hand/
the broken relics
to find.

In the night
a coyote runs
along a river
telling the pack
how he runs

and I run with him
for awhile

every belief
left unchallenged
the held heart
shrieking to
be free,

to love.

Gray cloud,
same old, same
old ghost in
the palm,
in the fading lines
of barely there

maybe
a bright moon,
maybe a white moth
on the tufted ear
of an owl.