Dear ghosts, because you are dead and restless

you leer at me from the darkened tree line, howl from the closet
with no door. In the calf-high grass below the garden, the red lines
of your questions harrow me to my knees. Where are the words
for the fact of your once flesh, for your missing? I plunge knuckles
into damp soil, plant the pear tree, tear the old porch boards,
force a pinnacle of blood from the nail-hole in the ball of my foot.
How does it feel to touch? you taunt. How does it feel to own, to lose, to bleed?
Your laughter is a water glass breaking between my hands in the sink—
sudden invisible fracture, slow splinter working its way under.
Is this what it means to descend? Stories cut straps into your flesh,
burrow your skin with welts. But if you erase a story—
if I press my arms tight to the doorframe, then step away—
my arms will try to fly from my body.