One More Visitation

By John Grey


It’s midnight 
and the still dark air
passes a thin wisp from hand to hand
until it drops you in the bed beside me.

I hang by a thread
of wakefulness
over a deep memory pit.

You have no eyes in your sockets.
And yet you see right through me.
The barest semblance of a mouth.
But you whisper,
“This my home too.”

My face pales.
The chambers of my heart empty.
Lungs suck like straws
at the diminishing oxygen.

My cry of “Damn you”
chokes on itself
like the last gasp 
of a beheaded turkey,
as I sink into the morass of our life together.

I hold the knife.
You lie powerless before me.
But it’s the last time 
I ever get to kill you.


John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa and California Quarterly.

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Dead Woman