HUSK 1.3

Kelly Wilmer

“…but everyone else was gone,
and I was left alone
to peer into the ghostly distance” – Edward Hirsch, “Late March”

Driving on an
abandoned road
I was guided by
a waning light
of the old moon
I saw the night
before in a dream
where I watched
each speckle
of light fall
from the sky
as grains of sand.
I was a beggar,
hands out,
unable
to move,
feeling
each grain
slip through
my fingers
and dissolve
into a vanishing
ground beneath me.

The old moon
illuminated a face
on the windshield
staring at me with
eyes that asked
for something I
could not give.
My grip on the
wheel tightened
along with my
skin, pressing up
against bones
now chafing
and steering,
the grinding sound,
returning to dust,
that deafens all life
and the life within me.

The further I drove
the wearier I became.
Feeling more of yours
than I did of my own.
As the feeling
grew it churned
within my gut;
I pulled over the car,
opened the door,
and began to vomit
forgotten years on
the side of the road.
As they laid before me
I watched them dissolve
into the ground
just like the sand
the night before
but now linger
in my mouth
with a bitter,
withering taste.

Hovering over
what little remained
an icy wind smothered
the steam rolling off the rise
and fall of soaked, pale lips,
foreshadowing your arrival,
knowing I could not stay.

I had been driving…
for so long,
why
and
where,
I did not know.