By Oliver Carmichael
Some mornings I wake to find his hands
at the bottom of my bed, tapping
fingertips, cracking knuckles.
Some mornings they stare down at me
from the headboard, give a wave,
then scuttle off. Sometimes I find his hands there
pretending to be the salt shaker or there
balanced on the sink’s edge or there
stroking the elliptical leaves of my coffee plant.
Some nights they appear carrying between them
the squat body of a clay jug, the type found
in children’s history books: iron-rich, unglazed,
passing from potters to gods. When the jug is tipped,
not the sound of wine but the sound of a loosed beast,
hooves smashing the dark to shards.
My hands don’t know how to pray,
but they know how to search the dark
labyrinth of the internet for the man
who killed you. Find him two counties away.
Leading a choir. Still playing the cello.