the hush of gallery lights where memories stir
I return to Umlauf’s green hush—
once, ten years ago, vows drifted like petals under this sun.
Tonight, basil-scented ice clinks in my glass,
a toast to what was, to what remains.
sculptures stand silent,
limbs carved from stone,
echoes of laughter we shared—
I trace a pavilion’s curve,
remember the tremor of your hand in mine.
later, West Fifth’s glow beckons—
McLennon Pen Co., where edges are askew,
toilet seats swathed in fuzzy pastel grief, and angles tilting like tilted truths.
I sip white wine freely, a quiet rebellion, while a woman’s jeans reveal generous truths
that draw the eye, leave unspoken promise.
in that crowded hush, our paths cross— you, the half-remembered pulse in a dream,
we greet with lips curved soft around old longing,
voices low, as if to keep the night intact.
the next dusk finds me alone in the Paramount’s cradle,
Houdini’s spirit lingering in gilded balconies—
Mount Eerie’s voice unfurls like mist, stream of consciousness sorrow spilling for a lost wife’s heartbeat no longer here.
I taste peanut M&M’s, salted sweetness, the snap of candy shell against tooth, a Modelo’s foam slipping cool past my lips—
the ghost of loneliness hovers, but the music wraps me in its lament.
hair, cut at last—six months’ grown wildness tamed,
I feel the breeze graze my neck anew, a small liberation.
memory weaves through each night: GaGa’s soft humming beside a sunny window,
her father’s brush idle as dementia closed its shutters,
Aunt DeAnn’s laughter stilled by cancer’s shadow—
the marriage undone, soon to be paper-signed,
settlement’s footfall imminent.
fifty winters wait beyond the horizon— I hold tomorrow like an unclaimed plane ticket,
only bidder to Oita’s dream, a lone journey whispered in auction hush.
perhaps I’ll stand beneath Fuji’s watch, or wander temples bathed in lantern glow—
celebrating this half-century of becoming,
alone, but whole.
some nights hold the living and the lost— basil cocktails mingling with white wine’s hush,
stone lovers frozen under moonlit leaves, fuzzy abstractions of domestic grief—
a woman’s generous curve reminding me that desire persists in spite of sorrow.
and so I walk, a solitary stanza, through corridors of art and memory, each step a lyric, each breath a vow—
to honor the lovers and the losses, to celebrate the turning of my own becoming.