Mnemosyne
The old man in the bar wrote memory on a cocktail napkin. I fold it once and carry it home like a firefly in my hands. The wood floored room is rented; a blonde boy lies on a mattress reading aloud from Lawrence: The primary way, in our existence, to get vitality, is to absorb it from living creatures lower than ourselves. This is August: the window open, the neighbor playing Brahms on a flute. Ink from the napkin melting onto my palm, the boy tracing the new word it has made with cool fingers. And before his weight unfolds me, I remember playing on a dark street with my cousins, crushing dull-bodied fireflies to release their glow, rubbing the fire green across our cheeks, over our eyelids, along the bones of our hands. We were ghost warriors under the arc lights, skeletons come back to life.
