The room whispers to itself
in a hundred subtle tones.
Your dress hangs in a closet
in a panorama of sighs.
The ordinary light can’t ease
the sorrow of the bedclothes
crumpled to suggest the ghosts
that smoke from the graveyards
every resurrection eve.
Maybe after the moon rises
and wood fires sizzle in houses
enlivened with small children
the dark will seem less daunting.
Today I walked a dozen miles
in a forest devoid of birds.
The silence so inflated me
that like a great parade balloon
I arose from the leaf-litter
and assumed a posture ripe enough
to propel me into a future
in which absence is no longer news.
You preferred a day of books
thicker than legs of lamb and
almost as meaty. I assume
you learned something angular
so you shed your dress in a huff
and crawled into bed and wept.
Now the seams in the sky open
to reveal that pearly undercoat
we’ve always hoped to acquire.
But instead of consoling ourselves
in each other’s bodily aura
we pose on the cusp of extinction
as if enjoying this moment
of competing shades of musk.
William Doreski’s work has appeared in various e and print journals and in several collections, most recently A Black River, A Dark Fall (Splash of Red, 2018).