Elegy

A man stretches in his driveway
as the dawn creeps over his shoulders.
A cigarette dangles from his lips
and the smoke rings play tag
with the church windows across the street.
They are oblivious to the anomaly
occurring on the stale concrete.
He is not quite old, yet has been delicately aged and molded
into a replica of his father and grandfather
before him.

He is a replica of men before him,
comes home alone, missing what is gone.
A thorny crown haunts and scratches
his forehead as he sleeps.
He turns in his sheets,
needs a cigarette when he wakes
to forget about  the pills he swallows daily.
Tomorrow he  will move the graveyard
out of his backyard.

He shovels the graveyard into wheelbarrows,
abandons the memories
and banishes them to open fields.
But with each drip of sweat,
each deep breath,
his lungs expand and they stretch
across his chest.
They find secret homes in the crevices and folds
that remind him he needs to run more,
whispering as his shovel hits  the ground:
"You are nothing, remember?
You died on the day she walked out."

He died on the day she walked out the door,
died again a year later,
but that one hurt a little more.
He clutched his heart in his hands;
the cigarette fell off his lips,
and his mouth hit the  ground,
cupping her footprints with his teeth.

He should have run more.
Should have run after her.