Filed under: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes, Poetry | Tags: 30 Poems in 30 Days, Esme Writes, fire, ghosts, hot air balloons, lanterns, Poetry, smoke, summer, wine
Lanterns
We all broke into pieces that
once collected by the coarse scrape of a
push broom would never again as a sum
equal the initial whole
These were the things that
went wandering once the seams split
These were the ghosts that once
no longer trapped in our index fingers or ear lobes
roamed the earth, their weightiness
transferred to more or less
hot air balloons.
Or lanterns propelled by tea light candles.
Those lanterns we folded of tissue paper
and so gently lit.
The one false move and the whole thing ignites
lanterns
The breath held on a back country road in the
middle of nowhere in the dead of night with maybe a
few too many cigarettes and few bottles of wine deep
lanterns
We would set things on fire with matches
and our fingers
the nights where it was all it could be
the days where something delicate and dangerous
ripped
and all the seams unraveled
when our ghosts went wandering
like lanterns
or hot air balloons
our breath exhaling all too quickly
as flames and
clouds of smoke.
Esme Writes. 