1st

So far, just the moon, one star, and the flat shadow of your headstone. Nothing stirs; the quiet moments between birds and tree frogs when the world is still. In the field where we first made love, a silo light fans a yellow dress over naked shocks of corn. A freight train shatters the silence as it clatters down the line of a distant track, hauling away cargoes of darkness as it slices across the horizon. You haven’t found me. So far.

2nd

The night we let our still-born daughter go, the moon spilled a pail of bright water over our temporary family. Because we chose ashes, the dark leaves of her body found their way skyward on silver currents of air. Tonight, graveyard angels are my only family. Their silent faces do not chastise me for the grief I still show willingly. But the wind and the dried cornstalks that surround me snicker their amusement as the moon smiles down on me its sharp, lunatic grin. 

3rd

Above me, the flashing sickle moon nicks the dark and bleeds light out of the night. In some black corner of the sky, Orion jostles eternally with his invisible opponent. Again, tonight, I am reminded of your struggle.

4th

I dream I travel the narrow road of your life line that runs softly across your palm. Like a tourist, I stop at each milepost: the newborn baby screaming the purest sound humans ever make; you at age eight, knees and elbows scabby; the gangly adolescent who learned that her hand is the key to a new universe where the body burns pure as the brightest star. When I come to a break, you take my hand and lead me down the jagged path of your love line to where a line of your own making slices across your thin wrist. You whisper in my ear that it is a road to everywhere—and nowhere.