THE GHOSTS WE KEEP

 

THE GHOSTS WE KEEP

Sunday, July 20, 2008,

lurches forth,

a skeletal dawn

routinely so—

sporadic phone calls

shriek through the ether,

their hollow tones

clawed by guilt’s gnarled talons,

obligation’s frostbitten grip,

and the relentless dirge

of a habit embalmed.

We share little more

than a fireplace wheezing

its last, ashen breath,

its embers clawing

at a rug gnawed by moths,

cheap beer hissing

in cans rusted to ruin,

boxed wine pooling

like blood in a cracked chalice,

and barren conversations

that stagger,

ghoulish and gaunt,

through a Tuesday night’s shroud,

their echoes swallowed

by the yawning maw

of a house turned crypt.  

Beneath this spectral mask,

we cloak a rotting passion,

its decay oozing

through walls pocked with mildew,

hypothermic lips

livid as a corpse’s kiss,

quivering in the chill

of a silence that screams.

Ischemic blood

creeps through veins,

black as ink spilled

from a shattered quill,

a heart ceasing to beat—

for you, for me,

for us—

a DNR carved

into the coffin-lid

of our entwined decay,

its nails rusted shut

by time’s relentless hand.  

Aside from lacking the courage

to claw free of this sepulcher,

co-dependency festers,

grossly visible—

a web of tattered shrouds,

woven by skeletal fingers,

its threads dripping

with the ichor of despair,

ensnaring us

in a danse macabre

of mutual rot.

Each of us lingers,

a wraith in waiting,

yearning for the other

to rasp the words

that unshackle these chains—

yet our voices rot,

trapped in throats

choked with grave-dust,

living in toleration’s

bone-strewn catacomb,

where shadows feast

on the carrion of hope.  

The clock groans,

its hands skeletal claws

scraping through

a fog of curdled hours,

another Sunday’s dusk

draped in widow’s weeds.

The fireplace sputters,

a death-rattle glow,

its embers flickering

like eyes in a skull,

and we sit,

two revenants

bound in a sarcophagus

of ash and silence,

watching the walls weep

black tears of mold,

their whispers

a requiem

for a love

entombed alive—

haunting

the mausoleum