For Sylvia
With love and respect
She lingers, a shadow cast
in the hollow corners of my mind, pale
fingers, brittle as autumn leaves,
press against my temples, seeping
into the marrow of my words — each
syllable knotted in grief, tangled
like spider silk across the page.
Her voice hums behind me, sharp
as the crackle of winter’s frostbite,
whispering the unsaid, the undone,
the half-sown promises buried in the soil
of unturned years. I reach for her —
to catch the remnants of her breath
in mine, inhale her ache
like cigarette smoke, let it fill
the lungs of my sentences — heavy,
heavy as stone sinking
in a deep well of silence.
She is the ghost
I’ve inherited, a daughter
of her haunting, her bones woven
through the sinew of my syntax, her eyes
watching over every line, judging
the strength of the fragility
I dare to call my own.
