lynn finger

IF I SAY THE RIGHT WORD

There must be a word for the six directions

of disappearance, hollow like the sky.

I interview myself on 24/7 news

but they don’t tell

you that when people die, the marigold

on your lips weeps. I say you are gone,

like you left out the door, but you are gone.

I follow the field

butterflies, yellow as an inside-out heart

valve. There is no map to the skeletal walls

I look for, but am dropped inside.

The weight of finding it

here. Hibiscus crowns the walls, snow-covered

ivy on the door, it’s locked.

You left no way to find you. Stories grow

from passwords, scarabed from secrets.

Silver swirls of snow & horses find a hole

in the fence

& slowly take me on a journey in burning smoke.

The ash-filled air still holds us. There is nothing

to prevent us. A spider runs on tiles & destroys

time. I am lost.

I follow the whispered hooves & listen to wind

through leaves & bark. I follow them nose to tail

like you wanted me to, I follow your carvings

& silence.

The life you put together from sand. The eyelids

& furrows you staved to keep alight. I stand

in birches, never having moved at all,

breathing.

Lynn Finger’s poetry has appeared in 8Poems, Perhappened, Wrongdoing Magazine, Twin Pies, Book of Matches, Drunk Monkeys and Corporeal Lit. Lynn is an editor at Harpy Hybrid Review and works with a group, "Free Time," that mentors writers in prison. Follow Lynn on Twitter @sweetfirefly2.