Dead Bolts

I was looking for the ratio of flour to milk

when I found the envelope tucked near the spine.

Three pages of ink, a frantic kind of silk,

spilling out a anger I once thought was mine.

I spent a year rehearsing how to say

that the heat was a ghost and the faucet was black,

but the man who owned the halls has passed away

and there isn't a way to take the silence back.

I have this rusted key in the junk drawer tray,

a jagged bit of iron that won't turn a thing.

It's a heavy lesson on a Tuesday in May:

you can't fight a shadow or make a ghost swing.