Dancing
the bossa nova
in the kitchen,
studying
in the library,
she comes to me,
the one who died,
the poet.
Not my love,
but one who says
she knows my love
now that she’s
left this world.
It is her voice
I hear singing
in my ear
late at night.
Darkness blows
through the door,
knocks out lights.
Only black and
white remains.
Are you here?
She knocks.
Are you okay?
She’s not.
I smash the radio,
but it keeps playing.
I smash the microwave,
but it explodes.
I cut my feet on the glass
and she speaks to me.
Her voice is clear,
then nothing.
My heart
an ancient hole
she cries into.
I feel her again,
the pain larger
than a limb lost.
Not phantom pain,
but real,
penetrating pain.
All sounds return.
Her voice,
the bossa nova.
She stands before me
in white,
a goddess
to my troubled life
after all the storms,
the hurricanes
that destroyed me.
But it was not
my love,
the poet,
my mother.
The dead are dead.
And I am on my own.