I keep love poems
and past-due bills
in the same brown manila folder
covered with bloodstained fingerprints.
I don’t know how they got there.
I only remember
wind chimes of gentle laughter
rhythms of stuttered breathing
and flashes of mute mouths
miming screams
from distant corners
of a room shaded in tones of flesh.
Portraits on scarred walls ignite
each time I close my eyes.
Yesterday they turned off the lights and heat.
Dim memory seems all I have left.
Tonight I keep the door locked
shiver in darkness
and try to deep breathe
as I wait for them to come.
Roger Armbrust
