her ghost still visits me 12 years and counting

Her harmonica sounds pour out the speakers

as coffee pours in cups, it's early morning rise-

Sun rise. Hoosier trees shrug off their leaves

as I shrugged off her whispering songs.

We sit ear to ear in the car. Our split hairs 

holding hands, fragile touch across time.

Please don't let go. Don't leave me.

 

We drive through traffic jams of

International Harvesters and drunk drivers,

passing the flags of our home:

Don't tread on me, thin blue line,

air force, trump 2024, and mia/pow.

 

I bleed cause there’s no baby in me and

You bled America till you lay dead.

No purple heart for those left like me.

No award for being alive and alone. 

Set against a pastel Indiana sky

my winter sorrow counts down to Spring:

1. What happens?

2. What happens?

3. What happens when all the witnesses are dead?

Or I move far away to garner more accolades, 

papers of worth, out of my original context, 

set the scene, actors and roles. "Places, People!"

 

Do West Virginia mountains know my fears

as well as the molded stock room of a then restaurant

now demolished, now a vacant parking lot,

but rich with my memories?

Where does the history that only I know go

when everything else is gone?