She Arrives in Silence

She arrives in silence—

slippers of smoke,

unlacing the hush

between one breath

and the next.

.

She does not knock.

She dissolves through walls

of my sleep-sore skull,

scoops forgotten syllables

from beneath the bedsheets,

and strings them into a name

I almost remember.

.

The name isn’t mine,

but it fits like the scent

of someone I once loved

in a house that’s no longer mine.

Her touch erases

what didn’t happen.

I thank her.

.

A clock coughs

in the next room—

and suddenly,

my body returns

with its calendar of bones.

She wraps me in

the final thread of night,

asks me to forget, gently.

.

What remains

is vapor:

a syllable,

a pulse,

a tug behind the ribs

that will ache

at noon

without a reason.