Another life

Photo by Gabriel on Unsplash

~for James Sizemore

were you out there
scouting the foothills
of my future
in another skin,
teaching me in echoes
how to laugh
at tragedy
too cumbersome to comprehend?

were you out there
parting the waves
like a ghost ship,
easing my passage
through rough waters
of emotions
my body wasn’t ready
to submerge its bow in?

were you out there
screaming for help
in a wilderness
where your voice
was swallowed
by encroaching trees?

somehow, your voice
still calls to me,
like a recording
played in reverse,
a gun unloading itself,
a noose unspooling
and lowering itself down
into the cave of my mind.