Over there all that happened (and didn’t happen) folded packed in mental mothballs stories fading with licked creases some reduced to softer versions
wonder why I preserve breaths forced through my lungs in those days stringed around the eye of a hurricane circling, demonic, nameless… shaking me till I’m shameless for a day
on nights with a collective sigh stinging and I can’t tell which tale will toll for me and which nocturnal howls to lift the dust through endless times to relive in slivers of a pink tip of my tongue afraid to bite a dreamt memory that it might hemorrhage bleed the sheets of night
I want a dripping whiff of that afternoon coffee instinctively bitter, solemnity and hot ten minutes when lonely hearts willed an arching cease fire and time hovered among us long enough for my mother to build castles in my cup
over there the man flying his doves on the roof top across two streets remains a blur but the doves stirring the air in perfect shades of unison (I had named them after heroes long forgot) sometimes still raise dust in my room of their feathers’ aches and plight
I believed then I could break away would break away
I did one day the doves were left to die
over there at dusk my father played the mandolin and my mother’s voice filled all the gaps between our breaths - the dam that held surpluses of war long enough for us to shed in dreams
why do I long for hell on nights when I can’t sieve my sigh from the wind’s eye and I wonder if I should really break away from a circle named dead doves parade Gone fishing, drinking in the wild. perhaps scent of jasmine still smells like home back home in the rain.