Let’s agree to disagree
about this anger
I don’t feel. Only
those numbers in your handwriting
erased from a chalkboard
30 years ago know
how we were supposed to add up
or not. A psychology
of emotions cannot qualify
the spirit in the slate,
a song over the dugout,
stanzas hidden in the threshold
we passed through
so many times
without thinking to pause
long enough to honor the reveal.
She’s ready to declare:
I believe
in ghosts. She’s ready
to admit:
I believe in ghosts
so I might encounter you
in the hallway of that haunted
old school building.
If everything could be repurposed,
she’d like to be slate
under your chalk next.
She cannot resist the slate
surface of your skin strengthening
the faith in hers. The floor reverberates
with the heartbeat of a hummingbird
she sees in the corner
of the sky she forgot to touch.
The scent of rain falling on slate
draws her to you. In her faltering, she believes
the echoes will never smell
this sweet again. She cannot see
the hummingbird but knows she heard
its hunger spill over the deck. Recycled
boards stack up to the ceiling,
broken open
by diamond-shaped clerestory windows.
She’s not cheating,
she’s using her resources. The black stone
path of possibility shrinks at the edge
of her thought. Purple gems block the gray
light. You are free to live
with her beside the ocean now
that the sun has settled down. And the wind will smash
the glass panes into fragments
of salted lies—a beautiful disaster.
Night & Day Poems of Amy Nash 