Long night recalled
only in fragments.
Yellow apple skins glimpsed
in a refrigerator drawer.
A voice as clear
as cirrus clouds in sunset.
A remnant lust
fading into regret.
What needs to be
retold for a different world.
Instructions on
how to be old.
Sickness and health
interchangeable.
Hard words: love,
damage, porcelain.
The same old “used to be”
shifting: is memory
credible, imagination
no more than a broken cup?
The pattern on the tablecloth.
The tablecloth on the floor
and whose eyes are those
watching from the pantry?
Fatigue in the form
of question marks.
I had better get home
before answering any of this.
Want to lie down
silently and let doubt
slide away like a kid giggling
in a downward mountain stream,
all the way into an icy pool
then coming up for air.
A yellow apple for breakfast.
Afterward, cleaning up
the broken cup. Afterward,
memory kissing me back
to just after childhood
and the eyes of an early lover.
Dark Matter 
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