Helen Mitsios

 
 
Summer
 
We stared at the ocean because 
it was there like an empty box 
or an instrument we never learned 
to play. Sand drops and cocoa butter 
convex on your skin, worn flip flops 
dangling through drifting days 
of popsicle sticks and body boards 
ready to circumnavigate the world. 
Static on the old transistor radio, 
the click track of drums between
goose bumps and long walks 
on the beach where you smoked 
weed rolled with tobacco. 
We found a perfect shell 
then tossed it back thinking
there would always be another. 
In the corner of my eye,
I saw your ghost ship set sail.
 
 
 
Varanasi
 
Dried fishnets on the shore
and funeral ghats surrounded
by spectators and bursts of orange
marigolds. Who were these once-people 
displayed now so openly on 
funeral pyres for anyone to see
their last moments of earthly intimacy.
Flesh once like ours turned into black coal,
limbs once like ours turned into whispers of ash.
Dreams once like ours turned into eternal atoms 
recycled back into the waiting arms
of mother universe who will toss us
back out again. Atoms once like ours
encased in flesh, invisible to the naked eye,
reborn somewhere. Someday. 
The Harishandra and Manikarnika cremation
ghats flame day and night with bodies
wrapped in gold garlands. We peek
at the once-faces of the dead resting
on their smoke pillows and wonder at our own ends
and who will see our death face. But we are 
tourists and quick to move on. Quick to dip
into the Ganges for ablution that conveniently 
offers a lifetime reprieve of regrets. 
Tourists in our half-lives, 
we sit on the Harischandra ghat 
watching the river because we’re tired,
because Buddha sat near a river
and maybe we can learn an easy secret
or think a Buddha thought like he did. 
We offer jasmine petals and sandalwood incense
to flatter an afterlife we don’t believe in, 
listen hard to the sound of the Ganges 
like it’s a language we never learned,
hoping for a word or two we can understand. 
The Ganges River flows north towards
the North Star, but stars die. 
I don’t like rivers. They’re never alone 
and always move on. I trust the ocean
with its lonely waves reaching out for me.
 
 
 
Dans la Direction de Paris
 
 
On the train to Paris,
 
I brush my hand across your hand
 
then draw it back. I think of you
 
and you are already a memory,
 
the memory of a memory.
 
Sadness is your name carved
 
on a tree in winter.
 
L’amour. L’amour. L’amour.