April 17 NaPoMo 2021

[TranquillityBase]

I was going through your books, the ones I didn’t keep,
to trade them into a strange world that never knew you.
I came to Rayuela; 
it looked as if it had been left out in the rain,
or fallen into a toilet, swollen, warped, stained,
I started to toss it into a garbage can 
but instead thumbed  through it
to find dozens of  dime-sized pressed flowers 
hiding every 50 pages or so.

They are all the same flower, now almost transparent white
more like bizarre squashed insects 
but I recognize them from the photos,
the pictures composed of dried flowers that you made in Spain: 
a seahorse, a goldfish, two lovers, 
a death mask for Day of the Dead.

Now this book is a relic of your passage, 
the touch of your fingers
preserved one hundred times over:
I’m thinking I will enclose Rayuela 
inside a cedar box sealed with copper nails,
to add to my reliquary of your touch:   
pens found  when we cleaned out your car,
and the sun-faded Topo Chico bottle found in your garden.

Our last photograph of you shows those beautiful hands
sewing buttons on a red hoodie.

What will you make, now that your fingers fill a universe?

I was going through your books,
the ones I didn’t keep,
to trade them into a strange world
that never knew you.
I came to Rayuela;
it looked as if it had been left out in the rain,
or fallen into a toilet,
swollen, warped, stained,
I started to toss it into a garbage can
but instead thumbed  through it
to find hundreds of pressed flowers
hiding every 50 pages or so.
They are all the same flower,
now almost transparent white
more like bizarre squashed insects
but I recognized them from the photos,
the pictures composed of dried flowers
that you made in Spain:  a seahorse,
a goldfish, two lovers.

Now this book is a relic of your passage,
the touch of your fingers
preserved one hundred times over:

I’m thinking a cedar box,
sealed with copper nails,
added to my reliquary of pens found 
when we cleaned out your car,
and the sun-faded Topo Chico bottle found in your garden.
Then I will build a shrine
out of limestone and cedar
in the oak grove that we cleared together.
Finally I will have a place to pray
and a spirit worth praying to.