Shoebox Reunion

The bass rests in your hand like a cork trying to stopper some
necessary escape. There were words for this then. There aren’t
now. I remember peeling the blisters after writing songs for days

and acting like the new skin wouldn’t also turn bubble and flake.
Your eyes are still wet in this photo. They still know color
and disappointment. They still make an uneasy border

with the air. I think the songs started in our stomachs, a kind
of acidic wanting—something necessary for transformation.
I don’t know which song is coming up through your palm, making

the strings apprehensive of their quaking. I know we pushed it
into the same atmosphere as smog and crematory plumes and news-
casts of older epidemics. I know we ground our teeth into a powder

we could sing along to. And on this paper, you are puzzling over
some arpeggio or another, some apart thing that others will hear
a whole. You’re gone but your life is not done

with the rest of us. I want to tell you to grab a beer. I’m working
on the lyric sheet. We should have a demo by dawn.