Knock

She lost herself in long tales and distant stares
Toward a nearby nowhere.
And that’s all I could say because I hardly knew her — She
Is a story being built on furnished wings —
Her eyes set like wet concrete on a bare foundation,
The slightest scratch impressing a lifetime of touch
Brimming with an incurable curiosity too cautious for compromise.
Her eyes twin crystal chandeliers that drip light like honey
On a winter night’s subtle charm.
Her eyes the street lamp at the intersection of here and nowhere,
Where stop signs and street lines guide most traffic
At a comfortable distance away,
But I pass by with my bag of tardy words
Wondering when I’ll write the right letters,
Or if there’s anything I can say.
She smiles a gleaming white picket fence that keeps most thoughts in
And most lips out.
She stacks walls a thousand hours long
And lives the lifetimes of them all.
She tiles her roof hardcover,
And tars it ink.

Today I stay a while and listen
To the steady crackle of flames
That billow from her chimney.
She relinquishes her bonds, ignites them to dust
And breathes in the relic of familiarity
That seals her doorway.
I offer her a log and a hand…
There is warmth in the years that unravel before us,
A quiet baptism of soot and heat and death
Cooled by a single wayward tear
Ferried across the chasm of her lips by a sigh.
Cinders arc their final scars across the hearth toward her.
We stay until the last wisps of ash complete their waltz
And part with a smile and the knowing that, tomorrow,
She will be gone.