A Rose in the Ghost—(The Most Beautiful Night In 1988)For David or Daniel.

“The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar.”
—Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussycat

The most beautiful night—
a story I’ll never know
therefore can’t tell.

Not a secret
but a truth
that exists only
in knowing,

Best left unread,
never spoken aloud.
A vibration humming.

Faint—the lock turns
with a slow, deliberate
liquid grace.

In the dark between
door and frame.
A rose in the ghost. Not
a flower. Petals clenched
on shame-kept secrets.

The ghost isn’t haunting—
it’s the shape of my mouth
around want and opposites.

The air:
spearmint gum and stolen cologne
that tang of anticipation-sweat
on freshly-showered skin.

His name was David.
Or maybe Daniel.

He was a friend of dreams
and wants. My compass
needle reading north and
south—
I had been heading west.

His scent—
museum or terrarium.
A closed world.

The vanilla-tobacco burn
of a guitar left too long
beneath his sun.

Some truths live better
in shadow and dread.
A chord never resolved.

The bloom uncurls—
moonlight cradles
the night-blooming cereus.

A smoothness
beyond effort—
elegance unbuckled
for intimate surrender.

We wept—
a blessing held
in the liminal space
between us.

Our pulses braided
a reckless fugue—
two Hoya Kerii
drinking water
as liquor.

A keeper of silence—
depth unresolved
speaking nothing
but what he held in his hands.

The most beautiful night
curved into itself.

Other blooms thrive
with neglect,
on the quiet starvation
of almost—
remembered.

Event and echo:
the touch,
the memory of touch,
then the memory of remembering.

Night stories
are just a flicker,
a breath against glass
already fading
into almost
and never.

Even then—
only just.
I still taste
spearmint.

A final note: the door
now still, deliberate,
casts the exact shadow
from a rose
missing from its vase—
as he stands in full sight.
By the light of the moon.

You are, you are.
The moon, the moon.

Oh,
the most
beautiful night.