Ghosts

When he told me he was leaving, I almost dropped my pen. 

I haven't let go of it, since. 

For a long time I could only write about him in metaphors. 

Lucky for me, the world is full of ghosts. 

Example 1: 

Leaves stained onto the sidewalk we strolled on

create gray-green watermarks on the pavement,

like the negatives of pressed flowers. 

Like the ghost of a letterpress still whispering up from the page. 

A sidewalk, is a deeply haunted thing. 

Example 2:

I understand the gravity of a train 

from the empty space 

and warm afterbirth air of recent loss

when timing falters 

and I arrive at the platform of your heart 

32 seconds early, 

or 32 seconds too late. 

It is the same with all things of such weight. 

we know them best when we have just missed them. 

Example 3:

Snow angels; 

being beautiful because of the outline

created by bodies to name an absence holy. 

At the same time, 

your finger points to the inherent fiction of angels. 

How can you make sense of an empty space?   

If the stars have, as they say, been dead for millions of years 

by the time their light reaches us 

then it makes sense for my downfall 

to be a truer thing to call sky. 

Example 4:

Dove collides into window, 

leaving behind a white, dandery imprint of its body. 

a crime scene outline saying

"he was here"

take this, the dust of me, 

and remember 

how my body was round, and warm and soft, 

and would not move through glass

if nothing else, please remember the ghosts I leave behind.