by Mark Sampson
Your death caused a bonanza of memory,
a return of the hypermnesia that plagued
my younger years. I forget nothing!
my brain screamed that night,
and for many nights after,
an unyielding séance of yesteryears.
I soon longed for a longing,
a hunger that would fade to vapour
if I fed it. The language of your absence
was like scat-singing: I understood
not a word, but still grasped what it meant.
I know you’re here. Don’t deny it.
You linger in cool curtains caught
in evening breeze. You shamble
down my hardwood, scuffed to gray
from too many spirits’ shambling. I cannot
sense it, nor make sense of it, but your presence
holds heft just the same. You have become one
with something cosmic, and I am still here,
still writing about the shadows
that remain.
— from Juniper Volume 3, Issue 1