After Ithaca

You left so quietly.

No thunder, no speech,
no gods bending the olive trees,
or sails straining against the wind.

Only the crickets noticed at first.

They seem to remember you
in smaller ways.

Your heart
was a loose stone
kicked away from the path.

The rain smell of oil and ash
collects now where the roof
still bows inward.

I stand among my own life
as a traitor.

Even my name
feels borrowed
after so many years
of longing.

Every night,
I watched fate sharpen a blade
against the bone
of the coldest star.

And now we can’t speak of it.

There are waters
that do not end at the shore.

There are defeats
that follow men home,
and live inside their mouths,
to teach them perfect
silence.