Echoes in Your Absence

By Oisín Moloughney

 

familiar voices echo

the way many hands

permeate dangling halls.

you seem irreplaceable,

exotic & shameless in

your absence.

even here I remember

your violent footfalls, your

frozen deaf sulk,

a far but sudden

moon stalking through

brittle winter blue.

 

I’m a man now, &

still wait like robins in

un-swept snow, though

with every season I improve.

a father found me,

found love,

found God,

found myself patterned

in constellations

laced on river purple.

 

there are days when

my throat is a tombstone,

but I know now what’s

foraged beneath,

what’s swollen &

sticky in combed branches

silhouetted by the

blinking dusk.

listen here as I

applaud,

             sing,

breathe,

             resonate, &

walk proudly with

the echoes, 

            in your 

                      absence.

 

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Cover photo by Noah Silliman on Unsplash