Spectral

I have a few droplets of memory in a sea of unknown,

the dark pool my heart sails on.

I don’t remember Grandpa Price, or Aunt Judy

only auburn-haired Babydoll Susie from Grandma Price

Grandpa Lacy rolling a cigarette

waiting for my stepdad to return from the vet without Charlie.

The losses were all at once, ages 5 to 6

and wormed into my body, trapped ghosts.

My jumpy reflexes remember,

overeager white blood cells,

hair-trigger nervous system.

After the death we moved north, away from the Gulf and

I kept looking back

forever a pillar of salt, wavering sea salt face.

It became the point of no return, the point of departure,

my glowing hair and dark brown eyes didn’t recognize the inevitable match point hurtling towards my small cobbled family in our small house along the cobbled road

like something much older than a postcard promising sunshine and pretty girls

in white bathing suits.

*

My eyes are almost green now, slowly

floating palm fronds coloring my world.

Inflammation chronically degrading the pigment.

Gold palm tree earrings in my little ears,

infection prone.

I rent a car: two doors, red.

Slide my blue placard on the rearview mirror’s neck.

Drive past office parks, all

shades of taupe, dusty rose, greypink, I realize:

the color of my hair,

the color of my clothes,

the color of so much here.

I thought if I got close enough my body might re-align,

might right or re-write itself.

That the perfect positioning might beckon some kind of time-space refractive healing.

I brought crystals: smoky quartz and lemon-lime jade

sinking in linen pockets.

But my childhood home must’ve not been quite close enough

or it was too late in the day

or the weather was tricky, after all

it’d thunderstormed the night before and

I left just the same.

At twilight the palm trees are a ghosted silhouette against the sky

whispering vague memories of my lost paradise.