I am cousin to the sun, a hired
cure for darkness. My fingers
busy as rain. In my palms I hold
an invisible, melancholy silence,
a violin with no strings. I stretch
and preen in the shadows,
a pensive, swivel-hipped owl.
I’ve crawled
into crawl spaces thinner
than a thimble. I finger
the wormy wires, un-cup
the fixtures and peer
at their sex. I know what grows,
furtive as thought, in the porous
walls of houses. I step lightly
through the coffin
cough of attics and closets, among
the boxes, water-stained
and slumped in garages. I coax light
back into rooms, using screw drivers,
flashlights and sleight-of-hand—
a stooped everyman’s magician. On certain
oblique afternoons, I’ve mirrored
your neglected interiors back at you.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 16, Issue 4.
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