Richard LeDue

Reading a dead man’s letters
doesn’t tell you how to live forever,
but proves someone cared
enough to keep them for publication,
and that he had some friends
who are or will be licked
in an envelope by death,
while the cost of stamps rises,
causing complaints from those
with nothing to send,
as they allow paperless words
to fill empty air,
leaving behind no evidence
they ever were.

The noise in the hallway
while you’re trying to sleep
because you have work in the morning
will die. Crows cawing
over string falling from your pants
as you start your car will
die. Your alarm clock
set for 6 AM will die.
Even those tiny bugs
(you seem to only notice
on weekends)
that love spilled honey
will
die.
Your voice already dead,
as you recall those summer nights
when hair over shoulders looked best,
the shape of another
impossible to miss,
even in the dark,
and moaning made the most sense
as you felt alive just long enough
to say nothing.

He lived in a morgue
that was renovated into a house
(an old friend of mine
I haven’t seen in years),
and the spirits would come out
at night, poking you in your sleep,
or so I was told
because I’m yet to meet a ghost
who wasn’t still alive.

The quiet among snow bent branches
tries to tell us how footprints usually go in circles-
our tracks barely worth sniffing
by hungry wolves who know dogs easier prey,
while we fall asleep watching TV,
microwave popcorn on Friday nights,
sleep in on Saturday mornings,
only to complain about our beds being too soft,
and sometimes Sunday is a hangover
or 7 AM, staring out a window
at trees, swaying in a winter wind,
not sure if they’re agreeing with or mourning
the years consumed by a silence
we try to silence, yet it’s louder
than any crying from an unplanned newborn,
laugh track we smile at every Thursday at 6 PM,
or World’s Best Dad mug dropped,
destroyed by the same child who gave it
five Christmases ago
(our swearing muttered as sweeping up shards,
afraid of cutting feet,
leaving a trail of blood we’ll have to clean up too).