This time of year, the church is hollow. Sunken and faintly-lit
like a rotting pumpkin with a flickering candle. The sky hangs low,
draped across my forehead. The weight of it, a headache.
Silence shivers out of boarded-up storefronts. On the awnings,
leaves and girls fall, pile, and rot. All this, the natural order.

Heirlooms spill out of photographs into our hands, our houses,
piling high in our little-mown lawns. Yellow lace, tarnished silver,
slap-stung skin and bodies that quake when the church bell tolls.
This time of year, we pretend to forget that All Souls’ Day is a Holy Day.
We hang ourselves up by needle-thin threads of sky. We scrape

half the dirt from under our nails before giving up. When the candles
blow out, we lay still in the dark, listening to the rot seep in.
We pass the same damp, wrinkled dollar bills in circles through town:
tips, beers, bags of apples at market. Sometimes, I wonder
why we don’t just gather in a big room and give each other everything.

We have more than too much. Hot cider, hot chocolate,
all lukewarm: Wherever we go, we are cold and colder still.
Wherever we go, we are waiting for us. My poems go dormant
this time of year. Sometimes, it is better that way.