(12/19/2020 c)
I like to sit in bars and look for the ghosts of old
boyfriends.
I haven’t had a single sighting yet.
Of course, chairs rattle. Floorboards creak
as an unseen hulk passes like a cold, winter draft.
Sometimes there is a silhouette, a fleeting
but distinctly human shadow cast in tease.
Once I took a photograph, hoping for orb backscatter.
Instead I captured three pool players giving me the finger.
Electromagnetic field detectors don’t work.
Hunting is all guess, imagination and wild conjecture.
I wish just one man was here.
There is danger in investigating alone.
I always pack gauze and ointment.
What would I say if I saw them,
if they saw me seeing them?
It all seems cruel—
to say I equate their dying with abandonment.
They should have attended to their blood pressure,
the faulty heart, the lure of pills,
the second chances were last chances.
That I take their deaths personally.
Crueler still—
to tell them what I’ve done since they left:
all those Mai Tais, the faux honeymoon in Vegas,
in Mexico, the lovers and one-night stands,
especially the one who knew all the right moves,
the books they recommended that I didn’t read,
the blood, the spleen, the body,
all that terrifying breathing,
the letting go.
The letting go.
