Eilis

You dreamt of her milk-white feet
chirring as she walked towards you,
but all you were able to hear
was the eerie paper-sway

of palm trees at your window. Your
apartment was mostly silent
when the kids were away and there
was nothing more you wanted

than to hear her laughing—binging
on Netflix. You dreamt of Tampa Airport,
of the taxi door opening. You would take
her bag and watch how her dress fell

when she stooped to get in the car.
She was meant to be here,
meant to stand before me, you would
say, but the strong trees of Germany

held her like a man ravaged by his own
barbarity. She never came. Instead
you used to say something like: I am only
the remnants of wild-world we constructed

in our poetry. The heart of a bird.
The small sound of a piano petering out
when the player lifts away
finally resigned she will never learn to play.

How long can you love a ghost? I watched you
love and love and love until you were feral.
You never learned it was possible to become
yourself again. To watch her shadow cross

under the close-mouthed door and leave you.
Where you watched light run through
cracks like a child wandering
a dark house alone before dawn.




At the end of the day
I tell myself there is nothing
to remember. The flower

buds fall over broken stones
in the same way
my insides do—the pebble-feel

of being broken apart
while still put-together. When
every day (I

tell myself) is the same,
it is maybe better
to skip them, to forget them.

And find myself
some years on—a wobbly shadow
of a bus on a wall

at midnight. Dragged out.
Headlights bending my shape as I
slide forward to disappear