Ghosts
You can’t compete with a phantom a floating composite past being. The little sigh living inside an eardrum.
From every soft
surface patchouli
oil or PineSol.
Wet leathery soles
running uphill in rain.
Calves still sore still burning after the incline.
Fuzzy sweater no holes: the orange pink yarn strand-by-strand knitted into an itch-heavy-corded for winter snow; a dirt-snow mud-thinned caked into hems of denim.
That frost bite scar waxy when light catches. Light from the lamp from the roadside sale from the long drive from the thumbtack on the map from the free weekend from the beginning when jobs and time and money and time and friends and time did not matter. The quills have worked their way down to fascia muscle bone marrow cell. You can be you, but you’ll never be them.