Ordinary Things

There is a shadow figure in my brain
a non-existent someone I speak to
in a sun-lit kitchen about mundane things,
and share a meal with, and ordinary conversation,
a story perhaps of my day,
the way the sky looked as I walked home in the rain,
the spill I took on wet grass,
the smell of which evoked
a summer spent long ago in Arles–
Marie-Hélene, bicycle rides and créme de menthe sodas–
the minutiae more alive in the retelling,
the story itself imbuing meaning,
without it the day lost
in shadow play and half remembered rumor

Sometimes, if an evening is cool, and the breeze brushes my face just so
and the leaves shake with stifled laughter from their bony branches
rustling softly and murmuring like huddled sisters,
sometimes if the moon is full and my eyes are drawn up from slate and concrete,
the brownstone skyline crouching under a velvet sky,
sometimes my sorrow nods off in a sudden cat nap and
my heart brims and breathing quickens,
blood flushes my face and
my brain vibrates with purpose
and for a moment I believe I might live a different life,
not a shadow, flitting across the walls of consciousness
but a fiery thing, alive and connected,
a beam of intention
fearful of nothing
imbuing all with a meaning I invent and
alive
to this overripe world.