How do we get back

How do we get back

This melancholy lurks under everything

and seeps like purple haze through silent moments

to turn every sunset blue.

The fall wind whistles through an open window--

and shreds of flesh around the gaping hole in my chest--

making my bedsheets colder and crisper than I ever prayed for

on a summer night in Houston.

How can I speak the words that turn my pain

from somber shadow forgotten at high noon

to the inescapable emptiness felt by a shoulder

with amputated arm?

It still functions

but never forgets the security of sinews seamed together.

It jolts awake at night with phantom pains

invoked by that ghost I loved so well

who still haunts my dreams, waking and asleep.

How do we get back