grey

This is always the right place to start. 

When I began to bend,

an old friend touched and touched 

my soul that billowed around.

I can’t find the words for his arms. 

I take it away from myself. This is

about the obscene cardboard and tins,

the pinkish splashes on skin or floors,

and the scuff marks and the sheen. 

If I carry it in my hands, I’ll spill.

Things smell of dust and metal,

and the strange perfume scent of the day before she died,

(the time before), no voice anymore. Her breath hatched out

from a brittle egg; those last breaths we think were

spiritless, although we watched them with red crying lips.

Months ago I was sitting in the broad sill 

of the hospital and I silently cried

at Rangitoto’s breast silhouette crouched in the water. 

I looked at a magazine. God did not perform a miracle.

But I knew your words as they

landed in me,

already familiar.

I could not write the actual valley of your voice,

finding hairs among the coins in her purse,

thin receipts,

an inescapeable fear. They sealed her lips

with embalming glue. The sheen of a cold candle.

My last kiss was a rite -

please

take this pale kiss from my mouth,

taste remaining like a flower stain,

smudged into the carpet by dress shoe heels.