Rasping Lullaby

Two distant wails, two shoulder taps, and the ghosts that bridge the gap.

Zdzisław Beksiński, Untitled, 1958

There’s a last time to everything.
The last time your grandmother
picked you up.
The last time you felt
your lover’s touch at your nape.
Last smile, last fight, last weep.
Last song, last joke, last meal.

Painfully trivial words,
that couldn’t sound final,
yet were the last goodbye.

I felt entombed in a cage of my making.
It stayed longer than I knew how to leave—
clenched my skin, changed it blue.
Yet I leaned forward for a touch from him.
He left me open in a tub of what remained.
And I stayed there, long after he didn’t.

Nothing is truly final.
It’s always something,
that tastes just like him.

Cry, laughter, or lullaby
that sounds just like her.
Her name in my daughter’s eyes.
Soft, rosy baby skin that feels
like her wrinkled, exhausted arms.

We keep going even though
time seems to stop.
Looking forward,
while the shadows
lurk hungrily behind.

The door never fully closed.
No matter how many locks.
No matter the iron or the oak.
The dead always find a way.
Who are we not to let them?

She tried to hold a scornful scream.
It shattered what little peace they had.
I tried to make her stop.
I tried to choke her back.
Yet she escaped into the nooks.

Inside the creaking floorboards—
Lullaby, or a threnody?
I still hum it anyway.
Low enough to survive me.
Soft enough to stay.

I’m sorry I didn’t hear what you tried to say.
I was too young to understand you anyway.
I’m sorry I told you I hate you—
that I want my mom—
that you’re ugly as night.

You carried so much dark inside.
I’m sorry it took me thirty years
to see how much beauty
you hid in the shadows of your light.

So I don’t shut the door too tight
I sit beside it, a quiet weight.
Let the dead pass quietly.
Let the shadows feel my breath.

If this is grief,
then I’ll hold it like a child —
teeth clenched,
eyes glassy,
wide open,
and fully closed.

Reincarnated.
Resurrected.
In this world or between the stars.
Doesn’t matter—
As long as we’re together.
Hugged, forgiven,
chipped but complete.
Until we meet again.
Until the rasping stops.