We walked by a mound of gleaming possum bones

on the way to Meadowbrook Apartments. A rattle snake slid

across the dike’s padded path & into the tall grass.

Cutting through the old glass factory, I wanted to tell you, I loved you,

like the wind wants to sleep after the far-off beating of the hayfields,

but I was tired and needed a hit. I needed a hit the way, as kids,

we prayed for snow with a spoon under our pillow.

Those bones no longer feared the swollen earth,            the raging sky,

but I feared you in a small town & the ghost

you said you saw at midnight, who walked past

your bathroom door as you polished your work boots.

At the plywood door of Alderman’s apartment, a narrow wedge

of light lay on the cathedral of pines in the distant mountains.

You would’ve thought we were pigs, our knock a power ram,

the way his girl pulled up the sawed-off from beside the couch

and turned up both barrels.              This was your idea, this buy,

& somehow, I loved you even more. We just wanted a few grams,

clean as marrow emptied of everything,

but spillways of darkness & a few flecks

of buckshot. Despite the utter stillness of the room,

a mirror on the far wall slipped, shattered, & shards of us pollinated the floor.

She took a drag            then fired twice.

                                     Your ghost, you had said as we crossed Brisco Bridge, was gloom

                                     sidling into your bedroom. An old woman with black braids

                                     & a face obscured by tobacco smoke.

                                     Every night, as if on repeat,

                                     her lungs gave out:

                                     your bed creaked & you heard a sigh.

                                     When you went in—what was there?

                                     An empty room, an unmade bed.

One round exploded

into the plaster wall. The next, a halo-flash into your hip. You buckled to the floor.

If we wanted, we could have called this home. A thousand reflections of your life.

The next day it felt the same. But now, it’s an empty apartment

filled with deaf ringing. Now,

it is something in common. & like any old story,

we retell it at bars & around bonfires. We move close to hide from it.

This night returns to me often. You—on a carpet

dashed with cigarettes & weed stems, a black rope of blood flowing

out of your green wildgrass hip & around your leg.

I keep wanting to grab hold of your hand

& every time find another reason to play dead.