Sharks

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The door is open wide. I don't remember locking

It up. Perhaps the wind—? Or someone broke in.

Well. To call the police involves a later bedtime. Sleep

Is all I crave these days. I guess I'll walk around

The house a couple of times and check the nooks and crannies. All

The hiding places, once upon a time, when he would disappear 

Behind the boxes never emptied—not even after the basement

Flooded. We just bought new ones. What are boxes when filled with junk

We can't remember? Walls or prisons, labyrinths—or 

A secret tunnel leading us to all the sharks this fragile planet holds. 

How angry was I? Well, I guess your head explodes

Until it doesn't, right? So many sharks. But ruined 

Concrete to me. Yet I kept up the jig. Such love

Could feel the grooves that made the dusky shark, the hammerhead, 

The white, the sandbar shark, the spiny dogfish.

All of them swimming where black waves flow;

No pause or doubt, no hidden cameras there.

Just that silvery and awful grace, twisting into the murk.

And she might leave her crimson tracks in the dawn,

A bigger maze to solve, a rose's bloom—

The bourbon rose that lets you wish and rage.

I would not admit the empty sound, the hollow 

Dark that came after he was gone. But I still swim in it. 

I really do believe that he's here now,

Hiding, waiting to jump out. Boo! And I know 

He still walks ten feet in front and behind me, asking

Strangers about their scars, running back to me

With questions about the impossible sun.

The house is empty, more empty than it's ever been. I turn the lights

On for the spirits that may or may not be here right now.

And I know there's only one thief in this house,

The one whose grief begins the moment he forgets.

He's going to get caught someday.