Every lost hour spent in a bleached daze
lying on the bed – so tired, so sad –
drifts out into the world like a ghost,
haunting the streets and parks, hoping
for shelter, searching for a medium,
someone to inhabit, to speak through,
to live through. So many dead hours
falling through the cracks in the pavement,
wandering like ectoplasm, like breath,
through sewer pipes, crossing the paths
of foxes and unseen slithering rats,
collecting at air vents and calling
in underhand voices, whispering
in the ears of strangers; or creaking
on the stairs of lonely women’s houses,
swinging a door uneasily on its hinges.
Never understood for what they are –
longings, muted cravings, unforgotten
dreams, untaken chances – they drift
back to the fog-filled mind, making
a cloud cover so thick it floats
free of the body lying on the bed,
gradually fading into the white sky
outside the window, inhabiting
the dank dark branches of the
unmoving tree, smothering the idea
of spring under a duvet of forgetting,
covering the lost child crying
“Choose me, Miss, Choose me.”