Your good-bye arrives devoid of return address,
all well-wishes and finality.
I do not yet know your meaning of good-bye.

So I check obituaries for ghosts of present, future, 
or past, that may never come.

That shifting mirages will haunt my dreams 
is my only certainty:

A sign appearing in my childhood market.
You look just like your dad; You drowned two weeks ago.

My mother saying to look again. You swam for two weeks;
They’ve pulled you out alive. You look just like a child. Next
a man shrunken, wide-eyed. Then cold,
blue. No, cleansed, innocent.

The market disappearing, and me trapped inside my childhood bathroom-
Just trying to change my clothes, but my nose won’t stop bleeding.
It’s coating me, and the floor, and the walls, and it’s just 
a traumatic accident, but I somehow think that I’ll pay for it,

think not all actions can be taken back, think that no
words ever said while alive have told anyone
the true meaning of good-bye.