Shore Leave

When you leave me here, by myself,
I find you leave behind something else; a void
of you. If you should check in on me after
you were gone, you would see my company;
you would see my worry and my longing,
but I doubt you would recognize their faces.

Because in them are the parts of me you cannot face,
the living ghosts that I have allowed to make myself
a mess of, each stretching out their ghoulish fingers long,
tight around my voice, my sentiments now void
of meaning, become like hollow offices of bankrupt companies,
just desks which have not harbored life, neither before nor after.

But soon enough, you will see us begin to move; after
all, what is life without the feeling of continuance? Facing
the open moon, I too become a ghost, the company
aboard the ship of my heart’s direction, a crew unto myself,
to scrub the floors of my heart, to steer and avoid
the brutish wild waves of my uncharted longing.

My ship will dock and I will enter the port at some locale along
the shores of idle time, my heavy boots dragging, my worry following after.
I will take up space there, and fill all voids
with residence in the bars of waiting, guessing what I may face
alone. I give my worry what I have. I buy a drink for myself
with what I have left. Sometimes misery comes without company.

Eventually I do not mind being a ghost. They are good companions
if you aren’t one for talking. I don’t mind their moans of longing.
I try to become no one, like them; I try to forget my self
and my notions of me; after all, what is the after
-life but one long bout of continuance? I will face
them for now, these empty friends with personalities devoid.

But in writing you these words, my solitude voided
onto the page, I realize I’m being followed by other company,
your emptiness peering over my shoulder, doing an about-face
when I turn around to catch it staring. You, your ghost, it longs
for me as I long for you. Without you gone, it has no place, no story, no happily ever-after
of haunting me. Yet I cannot stand to be with your absence, nor with just myself.

This is how I face the game of affection, dealt a hand void
of hearts, in each black spade or dead clover lies myself, each bleeding diamond my company,
longing simply to see my Queen come in, and I will bet all of me there-after.