The Haunting - with audio

I’ve been circling the aimlessness

of this, my practice, my word edges itching

for a place to root down.

Thoughts of a distant you masquerade

as the disjointed spine on a calm narrative

but the skin of this fantasy always peels back

to reveal nerve endings writhing

fiercely in the face of phantom extremities—

I feel everywhere the unnamable

you inspire in yourself, the crushing

nothing you desire for me. I claw

for an anchor in these shifting certainties,

this seething pool of cold ignorance;

how can I hope to fully know love

with one who wishes to wash each day

down to a clarifying emptiness,

a soul scrubbed clean of any voice

that might ask, or worse, might answer?