moths

usually i do not choose memory -
what or when to ...
recall sputters on or strobes away or
hobbles my heart - just now i remember
how sundays weighed heavy through my chest turning everything brown - something sad and far from rest - the too-thick kitchen smells; burned flour; dread-enhanced hour: four o'clock slightly soured and uncomfortable in its sadness. perhaps a room, a bit too warm with light too low and the suggested odor of roasts or stews - comfort foods - my throat thickened with words from a language i only speak somewhere between breath and dream. comfort. far into my preferences; my focus, my favorite trees, my inspiration - dead moths fill the fogged glass, bell shaped around the silent kitchen bulb. moths -through choice or inevitability or
inevitable choice - drawn to the light - again again again to beat their bodies burned and broken - burned and broken without comfort - but too, without regret

fearful and war-like in our obdurate obligation toward 'making
sense' - bottomless logic sealed off in unapologetic deafness - airless and seamless - jar without holes poked in the lid - wings fall silent in comfortable smother.

in gaps, in margins, in common corners and doorways where the faceless
sleep distracted by the senseless, the beautiful, the terrifying - i
keep a sundial in my basement, collect clocks with broken
hands and faces that can only tell me "now."
and i visit them often; offer candle stubs and photos
of stranger's whose faces have grown over my own.
i wait on either side of the aperature;
glistening and ecstatic within stoic rhythms
and i strobe-flicker for the hungry moth-spirits and,
i remember.