The Convalescent: Ghosts, Calm Down

Trapped
behind walls
behind veils,
cages that rattle with bars like hostile enemy lines
drawn in the sand,
places we always come to for the fighting,
I am left to pacing
back and forth
like so many wolves in the zoo
made to look pretty before the crowd...

Waiting
for the better parts of me to come home,
for the night-singing birds
who call in the dark
with the rising of the moon,
I can only wander these hallways
and wonder about the absurdity of empty beds,
about songs I sing into the night....

The implausibilities of love too much to know,
I can only laugh at a world gone mad,
the eerie sound filling up this house.