LIKE LIVING IN AN EPILOGUE

Remember the days of the week, the way the sun
rose and fell, the duplicitous stars, the afternoons
that leaned against the house like summer screens,
the spellbound waves, the trees that loved me
with indifference.

I saw how words kept everything from floating away
or coming too close. I saw a stone release its ghost
and did not fall to my knees. I saw the past like moonlight
on the blanket of childhood, a place where no one knew
and no one said. And that’s how I became unworthy of prayer.

But I have not turned my back on gravity, its kindness,
its solicitous grip, nor on the clouds that comfort and obscure.
I am sure I have not met the good me. Maybe she lives
in a dwarfed world in the bath of a newborn, or more likely,
in dark refusal to just walk away.