Something about Love Illuminates in a Honky Tonk

A cork board collage in the back corner

of the bar enables time to stop—

Something as cliché as a wall of snapshots

allows me to remember the dead—

their souls caught and caged

to a corkboard by a

cheap 30 mm lens.

I’ve become so jealous of the camera that

still holds the memory of their smiles.

In the parallel bathroom,

beer to counter,

hands to mirror,

I beg it for something,

anything—

“a mirrored pool of thought”

I walk away from the temporary soul-catcher—

jealous that it knew me, them,

for a brief moment—

“If a body catch a body”

I dance breathing in the simple, same smoke

beset air that they all breathed—

He calls my name for me to turn around

and as his simple finger presses the top

button of his camera,

I can feel it stealing what’s left of my sanity.