Veined

The thin veined leaves— I see 
their undersides as they turn 

toward window light. You know you're in 
the presence of language that speaks 

from the depths when you feel the skin 
trying to keep it all in. As soon as my head 

touches the pillow, the ghosts of my dead 
crowd around me like petals. If they wanted it, 

I'd offer my heart to them like a sweet. 
But they say they don't. Their fingers comb 

through my hair the way wind moves down 
the limbs of the crepe myrtle. After a good 

shaking, the earth around it is covered 
with drifts of pale purple and pink.

Do they offer instruction, warning, hope? 
They only circle my head like moons 

freed from their usual orbit. I keep trying to break 
language into patterns that will mean something 

beyond myself. I think of the mulberries I picked 
from a friend's garden, how even as half of them 

sank into swift ferment, their skin still gleamed. 
Night, too, presses its blue bruise against 

the house walls. Everything can fold back into itself, 
and my ghosts slip back like leaves into the pages of

a book. After, the air feels like it does after someone 
has said something so real, it becomes unrepeatable