steel raze he climbs into bed beside me, no worse for wear than he was when life and death last held hands. we don't say anything. we just share space for a while. i follow him down the stairs but lose him before i can round the corner. you tell me it's possible god has given me a ghost to lighten the load i've been carrying. or maybe my guest dug himself out of the dirt after restarting his own heart. you steel yourself to open up the earth where his body is buried. to see if he's still there, and to lay down an offering of crimson cloth. a garden hose snakes through my room. unused. unexplained. a man i once called my friend strums his scuffed guitar and sings a song i haven't heard before. he keeps circling back to these words until they become a piece_of_a_prayer, soft as breathing and sharp as the blade that shaped us: "everything goes wrong at the right time." 250712 what's it to you? who go blather from