What’s on my mind
is a murmuring that can’t be ignored.
It’s a whisper in the gloom of a graveyard,
a slow tease that burns like a match head.
When the fire finally starts–fwump–it’s like the snap of a pillowcase
in the upstairs bedroom, an echo against wood and grain that sends me running. The screen door slamming sounds like a memory:
eight years old and sick of the heat,
fiddleheads between my fingers
at the edge of the lake. Absently scratching
a mosquito bite on my calf with the toe of my shoe,
watching my reflection to see the change,
hoping with a child’s desperation to see a ghostly face
just beneath mine. Waiting for something
out of the ordinary to bring me satisfaction
on a day as plain as the underside of the clouds scudding across the sky,
feeling for something that isn’t there just so I know I’m real.