The town where I grew up is gone
and ghosts walk the streets, cruise the mall parking lots,
the cracked driveways. They move polaroid-pale without voices,
              no breath and no lungs and no hope.

Does my childhood self wander with hope,
              does she know she is dead?
She smiles from a photograph, artifact. Stars at her throat.

Wisteria climbs up too high for the bumblebees,
drops the sweet scent of an old auntie’s bedroom.

Atoms of scent and decay and return. Framed images
sicken to yellow. Outside, on the sidewalks, shades linger

              while calcium rests in a vault.
Oxygen, carbon chains, tears we all borrow,
              our breath and our sugar and salt.