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When you appeared
for the nth time
sloppy clothing flapping about
chalk on your face
the shock of recognition
knocked me flat
a lifetime of denial
coalescing
genetic punch.
Another incarnation
slight in black
talking scifi multiverse
multitudinous futures
a warlock's hat on your frail head
childlike, youthful
though every day the dirt comes closer
to the mouth
every second
you recede a little more.
I reach for you over thought waves
little girl's hand
hung in the air
your absence, finally, matches reality
to imagination
trying to get truth
from pretty metaphors
that can't touch your flesh
still young somewhere
while the precious science
you drank like fine wine
grinds your atoms
to dust.
Your body imprints sand
then you're off
drawn by sea-stained blowholes
crunched sand-dollar sting
dolorous seagulls.
Olive bladderwrack
spreading vesicles
on pale sand
kicked aside
as you move along the beach.
Ghostchasing
at twilight
waves break at the shore
empty
other than you, me
and one dedicated surfer
out there in shades of blue, green, grey
sky, ocean, sand blending to memory.
I can't keep up
scooping shell fragments, mother of pearl, bits of seaweed
sticky clues
still wet with life.
In this frail opening
between the deception of time
and the prison of space
I'm always a few steps behind.
You broke
before I was born
crashing against the shore of my mother
your secret hurt keeps you safe
untouched
while I scan the beach
a failed archaeologist
sifting flotsam in your wake.
Take down the tree
tinsel trash tidied
broken baubles swept
garbage bag wrappings
discarded
through greedhaze
glitter snowglobe
lights off
exhalation
into the new
year.
A carol to the universe
held in one breath
between motion
and inertia
kiss of the godless
earth mother lump
to her quantum
creatures
evolving
beneath
every tap of the keyboard
a newbie springs forth.
No need for
leather clad rulebooks
ark over flood
fatherly edicts
no sacrifices in blood
here.
This is a rational zone
still
so many years on
fertile.
Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. Her short stories, editorials, poetry, reviews and articles have appeared in a wide number of printed anthologies and journals. She is also the author of the poetry book Repulsion Thrust, the novel Sleep Before Evening, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment: How to Review Anything and three other poetry chapbooks Quark Soup, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Cherished Pulse, She Wore Emerald Then, and Imagining the Future. Find out more about her at MagdalenaBall.com.