this I remember most  


there was starlight pulling across your forehead when I came to get you from the back seat of our father’s truck. 
you were asleep, so I didn’t disturb you
(we were out to see the lightning bugs, and god there were so many of them, 
the field across from us was lit up with them, winking on and off like a thousand little white Christmas lights--
you know the kind). 

I sat down next to you—like I said, I didn’t want to do the deed—and waited, just watching in that night I wanted to pull around me and keep in me forever.

later, when we were driving away,
I savored the sensation of my light, false-satin pajama pants against the cool leather of the back seat, staring
through my own shadow out the window at the winking lights in the grass,
between the trees.
a congregation of faeries, I fancied, though I didn’t share the thought with you (it seemed too secret for that)
and we drove deeper into the night, headlights cutting
toward home, towards the squealing upwards hefting of the garage door,

and if I had known it then, the tunnel I had already started down, the one that would get progressively more
suffocating with each year, maybe I would have stayed

in that field with the million winking lights, 
and pulled the rushes over my eyes and dreamed 
the longest dream.





the reason we go on


through the mad torpor of the living
you whisper my name
and the memory of your 
lips shaping the word are as powerful
as the image of anything I have ever
left behind.

in the closet, your clothes still hang
like waiting husks, hanged men;
the mail still comes in for you.
the earth still spins, 
this lonely house still breathes.
I take your clothes to my face and
inhale—the hangers 
creaking, the clock
ticking.

you coming.
you leaving. turning off the lights
behind you.