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.
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