Spectral

Woman with Closed Eyes 
Man Ray, 1928

"Uses of Sorrow"
Someone I loved once gave me 
A box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand 

That this, too, was a gift.

-Mary Oliver in Thirst

"Gerrymandering bacteria"

Tell me a ghost story? No gore or goblins

but honest, straightforward, incandescent apparitions.

Because distant caterwauling is louder this way.

It's so easy to try and not notice, 

I never realized that before.

Turn a blind eye, that's what 25 

has taught me:

No matter how south I get these days

I can't find your trace, 

simply can't track anymore.

So I cleaned the refrigerator door 

trying to hide from residual DNA.

Even standing on a chair for a new perspective of the room

didn't quite give the right bend to all those maps,

so, naturally, I laughed it away one day.
Then all that left-over air at the bottom of my lungs
finally made its way out.
And there you were, right in front of me.


She asked,
"Don't you wish they could be like the rag--drip-dropping away?" 
Though, we were never quite flush.
Always a bit too jaunty, yes,
busy re-telling our faults in the other.
We were as right in the beginning
as we are right, now.


More obvious than not.