I sit on the white bench under the willow tree near the funeral home.
I miss the haunted house, light blue like my childhood home used
to be, and I think, can I visit? and where shall I stay?
The picket fence was broken, you mended it; someday I will return
only to bend it again. Thinking of you all the while.
Thinking of you at Hy-Vee stealing someone else’s groceries
from their cart because I told you I liked to rebel,
and you listened, and we both understood
why we wanted to take the apples we wouldn’t eat.
Ants spilling from the ripe fruit as we bit into it,
like dawn, like perpendicular lifelines.
And all this is imaginary, like the blank playing card
you found on the ground in front of a different person’s house;
but I think about it like it’s true.
I’m at a funeral home, after all. And I swear,
I must have conjured you out of the dark. The stars splintered, the
moon split open; fingertips sinking
steadily into lunar grooves, lattices, plaits of long black hair.
I pulled you from the silver dust— breath to bone. And I love you,
but I miss you all the same, for we were made from the same stardust;
we passed each other before we slipped out of collective conscious into the human race.
And the sky ends six times before I get up from the bench. And I knock
six times on the front door before passing through it.
Wrapped in a black cloak. Accustomed to the taste
of ice as it is handed to me in small plastic cups,
brought to me as I lay in a hospital bed; everything pale, sallow,
the nurses gazing absently with pity on their faces. And I chew my ice.
And I will come back to the funeral home, to the haunted house, to you.
I will come back.