The second wave came right on time
36 hours after the curtains closed
With the kind of cliched crassness that these common rites require.
And now Time, like a heel, contrives
To make the waves increase their frequency
To 24, then 12, then 6 hours between each stab of grief.
The sudden downturned mouth, the frown,
The sense of emptiness, the nagging fear
Of something torn inside my head I try to glimpse with wild eyes.
A pebble spat out of a pond
Might outfox physics in this fashion
And likewise make the ripples tighter the further out they spread
But that’s the way all hauntings work:
Nothing to scare you, simply a sadness
Jaggedly soldered to the welcome pulse of any trace at all.