Denouement
by John Sibley Williams
Prayer flags heave like healthy lungs beneath a five colored sheet.
Wind is implied. Or breath. Healing. But definitely movement.
All the weightless things around us convulse into terrible
ghosted forms, then return to their tenacious dangling.
The world ages at the rate we expect it to.
We are not so fortunate
as cricket legs at dawn. Here is the dawn:
caked translucent light, war painted heavens
steadily retreating, bewildered impulse
to enter the house and leave the house
without opening a door. Here is the door;
it’s grown smaller than a child’s body
and fits our burning. It fits her body.
I shine a flashlight up
to where hours ago we misidentified the North Star.
Temporary light. False light. We’ve lost as much
in going as in her being
gone. Go, I whisper, though she doesn’t
seem to hear much anymore as the body hum
slows into earth. Breath weakens its search
for more of the same. On the porch between us stars
are implied. Or roots. Her shoes with just enough wind left
inside them.
