It was half past typical - it was time
I watched him slip on his coat
And walk out into the alley without tears
And thought - Nothing touches him
he floats above all things
like fog weaving through the details
of curiosities and anguish
I am now beginning to know
In this night wary and shadowy betrayal
What it means to be a ghost
imagined and vague
His tapping fingers never really touching my skin
My spillover solitude never finding his focus

Words © malai carrara 2012
image by yuri pritisk

An afternoon of rain ushered
a choir of secrets
tiny flecks of solitude
adorn the earthen floor in a motley coverlet
of last autumn and new wool flower
in a web of silk tying there and here
like a moth I’m caught.
Perhaps I will spin away
The way a bead would spin on an abacus
always counting what you have
on that abacus
One new scarf, two facial wrinkles,
three loud chuckles.
I listen for you in birch bark murmurs
Watching its skin curl back
Like thin sheets of music
And the flakes cascade to pillow
I somehow recall how you sipped
My peppermint mocha but were too polite
To tell me it was not to your liking
I wish i had told you
I love being lost in sips of time
In thoughts with no fixed address
ambling in concert with the echoes of each

words © 2011 malai carrara
image by sandra strazdaite