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A Memory of Sunlight

Daniel Christensen

I can’t help but wonder
If partings begin to take their shape,
In our earliest moments together

Wind occasionally bends the downpour,
Toward us, lifts your age thinned hair,
With phantom fingers caress

You look at everything, as if,
It may not be real,
Composed of some momentary whimsy,
Hanging beneath the hammer
Of some atmospheric thunder,
Moments before a meteoric impact,
Lays waste to everything

Are there apparitions in our sunlit revels,
Roots in our laughter,
Lurking in the syrupy dregs of upended bottles,
Eyeing us, as we plod along our capers,
In blissful ignorance

It’s become odd to see you dressed in anything,
But the hospital gown, sheer and inadequate,
No modesty in its utility

You’re already shrinking toward nothing

Cloud shadows creep across the manicured lawns,
Moisture glistening across their phalanx
Of sheer blunted blades

I wonder if this is what’s best for us,
Muscles tense and slackening,
As we are milled, daily,
Within the perfect mathematical paradigm
Physics,
Of nature

You reminisce of brighter days, half in the halogen
Light, half in haze

You remember everything slightly different,
Makes me smile

You died not long after

Distant windows project mirrors,
Of darkened skies, roiling with unquiet
Atmosphere

The memory ends there, warps
And spreads a toothless
Mouth, engulfing everything
In an unmoored void, like melted photographs
We left as we fled
The flames, with nothing
But our lives

Rain holds a memory of
Sunlight, behind its gossamer curtains,
Carrying unspoken promise

There’s a flowerbed where we once stood,
Now

A medley of sounds, odors
And air pressures
Envelope us in their cradle of unconcern,
With a reprieve from conversation

We’re happy to see each other,
It’s enough

I brought the pencil sketch of a gothic cathedral
You’d drawn, and gifted me, in some
Other world, that yet held our youth
Behind mute airs and eyeless
Earth, raising its square chin
And thin, drawn lips,
Retelling nothing of what was

Shading causes the edifice to appear
As if it were leaning down,
Listening, watching

I wanted you to know I’d kept it,
But never moved for my pocket, nor made mention,
Held fast by some gravity spell of hesitation,
A dull stone, lodged in my throat

I wonder if we fear such gestures
Quicken the inevitable endings,
Of our final moments together

Shadows walk swiftly past the automatic doors,
Which open without acknowledgment
Or greeting

And I couldn’t shake the image of blood, so
Bright, upon stiff white sheets, when I’d
Arrived, so I focused instead, on your fingers
Holding a cigarette

Smoke whirling like a house cat
Djinn
As it rose, orange sunset
Cherry, beneath the grey
Ghost
Char, tapping the
Off white
Butt,
Somatically,
As you spoke, or
Gazed
At nothing,
In particular

I follow the maze corridors of your lined
Knuckles, to their terminus,
Then start again

An occasional voice drones
On the overhead
Public address,
Monotone,
As some obtuse overseer

I couldn’t return home right away, so
I stopped by the ocean shore,
Sun blasted sands, tucked beween my toes

I left the cathedral sketch, folded neatly,
Beneath a smooth shell, the graceful
Sweep of its grain, so artful, both
Real
And unreal,
Purposeful and whimsical

I imagine someone finding it,
Carrying it off,
Into another life

The sun places warm palms,
Against my upturned face

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