Tuesday, August 28, 2018

To My Childhood Best Friend

I can feel your ghost knocking against my ribs again.
Like the door to my childhood home, you push yourself in
through the threshold, and all that is good about you comes
rushing back into me,
like a resurgence of memory - and blood -
and unabandoned thought.

Those nights we spent lying on blankets under the Christmas tree,
wrapped in knit bows and cotton ribbon, our eyes crusted
with the beginnings of innocent sleep... those are the nights
I miss the most.
Now, you remain as nothing but the weight on my eyelids, pulling me
under boughs much too squat.

Your essence coils around my lungs, fighting back against
the void... the void... the ever flowing emptiness that has
been my keeper since you've gone. There hasn't been a day
that I haven't wept
over the milk you spilled on the carpet in my bedroom.
I can still smell like sweet, sweet rot.



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