The Shoe Box

A high school mash note’s stammering lust. Father and me, shirts and ties, snapshot glare, and somehow graphed into that air a young man’s foolscap poem when a just, loose joinery of words was all that mattered. But then in last night’s dream, she (mother, wife, mash note’s love?) tells me a box holding secret life has been shipped, enclosing sounds I haven’t heard: a wind-harp’s warp, words yarding across staves, fluty sounds ribboned to sad, screechy tunes. And things: a wishbone, ring, whatever I crave, the heart-hollows, the cannot-do-withouts, the whens and whos, the frayed veils between death and here... I packed this box myself. I packed it full of fear.