Written in collaboration with Stephen Fuller at The Rilke Project

 

In the sleepless nights since you left

I have become a ghost

Haunting lonely shores.

My restless legs cover miles

Before giving out.

I am raw, ragged

 

Who will walk with me through

The darkside of this morning

Where our kaleidoscoped story

Hovers above the water’s surface

Piercing me before they blur in the brine?

 

I clutch one eidolon

You drowsy and tousled in my tee shirt

Borrowed fabric softly falling

Shaping the constancy of arousal

The obvious distaff dangers unhidden

 

The rhythmic glitter of dawn on the surf

Belies dangers of the relentless undertow

pulls away and pulls away and pulls away

Underfoot.

Swallowed milligrams of sunlight

Penetrate bare boned trees, symbolic.

 

The onus of my salvation.

An image given

By a phantom.

I drop to my knees and see red

Stains on the mica staged to process the sun.

 

A drop of blood escapes my mouth

lands on the salt of the water.

I taste the essence of my pain.

I close my eyes to escape

This new life of me without you.

 

In sleep the surf tosses me

my dreams churn in the sand.

I reach into the mud to

pull out our story

before the ocean steals it back.