Haunted
I was the Salieri of actors
and therefore nameless.
No one loved the theatre house more than me,
and while I can hover its exterior
with the gentlest and coldest wisps of caress,
I cannot exit, cannot stop facing
erasure.
I’m a kind of portal:
the cosmos pours through
(it always has, I hadn’t noticed).
The flat roofline against the sky
(like a stage awaiting giants) could be
the tabula rasa of my mind
if it weren’t filled already with all I am not.
I am the permanently displaced,
my stories marks left on the stage floor.
Inner space is not infinite,
but it’s always shifting allegiances,
applying, like a mockingbird, its accommodations
first to one set of concerns,
then another, like a faux apartment in which sets
of furniture are constantly being switched.
Death settles nothing.
It’s just a veiled liquidation sale
where nature disguised as life takes everything
back (which has only been on loan),
from skin to props to stories
and, finally, echoes.
submitted to the Ghost Stories challenge at Real Toads
