Dietlikon, Switzerland

In your black coat I walk into June heat.

You take a dark bird's shape and fly away.

I see your ghost, but it does not see me.

The recently bereaved are hard to please.

I didn't make your bed or your mistakes.

In your black coat I walk into June heat.

A phantom bone that haunts its amputee,

of all my specters, you are most awake.

I see your ghost, but it does not see me.

I pilfer through these memories like a thief.

But maybe all's not lost. Some's just misplaced.

In your black coat I walk into June heat

And I keen once more for your mortal hands beneath

What gravid fabrics other fingers braid.

I see your ghost, but it does not see me.

So I sail, half-masted, through the ghastly sea

Of these wasted, assailing lovers, loss and fate.

In your black coat I walked into June heat.

I did not leave your ghost. But it left me.

Jill Alexander Essbaum