I imagine you alone in my house
for a day, without binding you to a promise
not to search through angles and nooks, or
through concrete memories filed in haphazard places.
I imagine coming home to you,
a pile of my past on the kitchen table
as you hold up each item without words
asking for a more explained honesty.
You ask of letters, old and grey,
bound with a soft cord and gentle knot.
You ask of pictures of me with her
and others implied by time and space.
You ask of official documents of a younger man,
those things held for required years and more,
in powered fear and presence--
those years that ground the wild from me.
You stop and hold me tight in thanks,
comforted that all I am is open to you.
We read in quiet and look up at times
to bind with sight that closeness we now feel.
And as I fall asleep at night,
With your head on my chest, and an arm around you,
I think of that kitchen table and recall the other
unremembered things found only in dim shadows.
In the darkness of a corner behind the basement stairs,
Sits a pale and toothless unlit face
seen only in the indirect gaze on the shine of windows
It's just a bastard of a lonely thing.
You have asked of me my honesty
I can't give it for the worst in me.
Mike Brady
December 2004/2008
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