the season of warmth, or rather inescapable heat, is pulling near. perhaps we can start there. perhaps i can meet her on the curb like we used to. where i asked her if she needed a drive home and she insisted not.

she wore different lashes then. her hair was full and her presence shadowed mine. i remember calling in a panic, "do you feel the way i feel?"

she could always put a name to it.

I mistakenly thought the departed
could have nothing more to say, but I was wrong.
For me, the dead do make a commotion.

I hear them all the time in discussions
I have with them about things left unsaid
when they were here, with you and I.

Do you talk with them too? I wonder
if you’ll share what they say to you.
We’ve no reason to keep this to ourselves now.
I just want to listen to all they were.

She turns up her nose at the marker there
Which lets each family member label their red plastic cup.
Big gatherings frequently number thirty or more,
Enough to use the package contents up.
Rather than waste them by losing track
And having to get another to use,
A name printed in black saves the day
And makes one’s cup harder to lose.
“Tacky” she says with an arrogant air
And gives us the glare we know well.
She’s out in the country in body but soul-
Wise she’s really a big city swell.

Psyche wracked with agony
impossible mission to extricate lovely bones
they wanna remain permanently abed.

I chiefly function to amass knowledge
courtesy assiduously, habitually,
and judiciously reading
an eclectic assortment of written material.

Yours truly woke
with ambition, disposition,
inclination, and predilection
to glean from an assortment
of books esoteric learning
since... birth, but particularly
when experiencing emerging adulthood
about two score years ago.