The Visit

Darkness envelops the visit
from my dead father. He says psychic
automatism betrayed him—the paranoiac-
critical debased him. We count

the shadows of ghosts untethered
from the sheets over their heads—
one forgot to cut the eyeholes out—
a blind ghost singing off-key
from a torn hymnal. We cram

communion hosts in our maws—
this batch overcooked / oversalted—
our holy pockets full then empty. We wade

ankle deep in wafers to the vestry.
It’s snowing outside. We sink through
the floor. We forget what we’ve forgotten.

What I’m Reading:

The dream wakes us to tell us to remember. Maybe there’s nothing to be done. Maybe the question is whether the terror is a warning about the world or about ourselves. The night world from which you are brought upright in your bed gasping and sweating. Are you waking from something you have seen or from something that you are?

— Cormac McCarthy / Stella Maris