personal archives

Under high ceilings (room enough
for light, space enough for time) a change is
easily mistaken for ephemera.

In cornered whispers – principal lies of a bully
archivist, secrets cloaked as retellings
of life – no one had expected blood.

There were always teeth in the kiss, always
a gripping – as if every room were nearly
empty. Had I not returned home,

it would have gone unnoticed – the death
of the apocryphal. Rather, unclaimed
footnotes thrust to narrative, in quick weight

under high ceilings – a history neither
dead nor vacant; one page naked
to what fills the next, and nearly empty.