kit zak

Haunted

After Emily Dickinson



Grief settles in the sinews
and winters in the heart.
It drives the sun away,
indelible, its mark.

Memory proves a traitor
when pain repressed can spring.
Longing for your goodnight kiss
inhabits nightly dreams.

Even in the morning
unbidden there it stalks
to pull the blind on simple joys
like musings when I walk.

I cannot lock it in the bank
or put it in a drawer.
It’s all I have to cling to
until that final Door.