She came to me in the most unexpected way,
which is to say,
at all & unannounced.
She came to me
and I hugged her out of habit, surprise, relief?
My heart stuttered, beating in past tense.
She came to me,
she said,
out of my past to look for her own, to
piece together what it was that made her go on living at all.
(Stupid!)
This was the big one, she said, the
worst one of her life. I
felt hurt, outraged, then
ashamed
at the greed growing fat on my fortune, afraid of how much
I wanted to be master of her pain.
I could have hit her, or myself, or blown up the earth.
(Weak!)
I took her hand instead,
willing my callouses to soften,
and held it as I took her to meet the woman
I loved
while a ghost piloted her body,
aging it without her consent
drifting in and out of safe harbors
circled with pencil on glovebox maps yellow
with smoke.