A Man Returns to the Scene of Where it Happened / The Walls Speak by John Grey

 A Man Returns to the Scene of Where it Happened

A scream. 

He must have heard it.

Waves of anguish ripple through

a sky hemorrhaging orange. 

 

He, mouth gritted, 

clasps hands around

an invisible throat.

 

She is unseen but felt,

a roar in the wind, 

a shudder in the boards 

beneath his feet.

 

Does the scream fade?

Or echo endlessly going forward?

 

The bridge snaps

like the bones of a neck.

with or without his footsteps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Walls Speak

 

The walls make noise.

It’s not mice.

Since when do those creatures

whisper in perfect English?

And I’ve never come across 

a rodent yet

that spoke to me by name.

 

Mere rustling 

wouldn’t bother me.

Nor the occasional scamper

across the kitchen floor

in search of crumbs.

I can lay traps.

I can bait the nooks with poison.

 

But how do you trap the past?

How do you poison a memory?

When it’s the past that traps me?

And my memory is poison?

 

The walls keep repeating,

“I can’t forgive what you have done to me.”

They’re not referring to the cheap wall-paper.

More likely the bloodstains 

that pattern is pasted over.

 

 

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, River And South and Flights. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Rush, Spotlong Review and Trampoline.