May 25, 2020Looking In
We live inside a house of many windows
where strangers walking by can see
our life of scrambled eggs, mashed potatoes,
of crossword puzzles and the empty nest
that is my hair. They watch us eating artichokes,
scraping bits of flesh from the base of the leaf
with our bottom teeth, the empty bowl
filling up with what remains. The trick,
my father told me before dying, is to keep on
breathing, and he did until the tumor
in his lung squeezed his heart wide open.
I think of all the lost hours of my life,
pockets full of maps I’ve drawn
on napkins; all the places that I meant to go,
forgotten in the closet. No one wants
to be a ghost, to wander in a world where
no one sees you. I tell myself that walking
barefoot is a kind of prayer, feet to earth,
breathing, lungs to air, even better, in the rain,
water on your skin. At night, we light a candle
so the strangers can still see us in the dark.
from #67 - Spring 2020