[Noun] An animal's cast or sloughed skin, especially that of an insect larva;

originates from a Latin word meaning "things stripped from a body"

The forest is a graveyard

The cicadas have left their corpses behind;

they populate the tree line,

Clustered on the oaks –

Exuviae

Like the strips of paint 

That peel limply off the house 

in the summer heat

Spirits mingle in the air as they call out 

Sending tremors through membrane and muscle;

A barrier of sound closes around you

Sweetly smothering 

Muting the beat of your heart 

Overtaking the rhythm of your lungs

Home has turned into a lunar maria

No wind exhales on yellow grass –

The only vibrations 

Are the ballads of thousands of souls

Trying to find each other 

You’ve been working on the old truck 

Rust worming its way 

Under your nail beds, 

Pulse fluttering thick and sickly in the humidity

Its engine is silent – why do you expect to hear me still?

No longer does Doppler 

herald my homecoming

You turn on the radio, 

Stretching the antenna up 

As if praying for salvation

Flesh cut by gravel – 

You kneel like a sinner in the driveway

Singing along to hackneyed 70’s rock songs

Humming along to static

During the witching hour 

You emerge from the house

The ghosts are chittering –

I sit beside you on the porch steps 

As I listen to you bargain with God

I curl close, catlike – but

My blood sits heavy and cold in my skin 

Soaking through my cells

And into yours 

Making you shiver

As morning claws itself 

Across the Earth

I see you standing in the yard, buffeted,

as hundreds of voices echo out in

One ebbing chant

All you can hear is them screaming 

All I can hear is you screaming

Your grief

Hisses like steaming milk,

Sweet and thick and scalding

Life ripples

Through you

Past lagging into present perception

The ringing in your ears  

Is tinnitus of the soul

Auditory exuviae

I cover your ears –

For a moment, 

The oaks are exorcized

But you turn and leave me 

Next to a fresh grave in the grass

I sit on the headstone,

Just another ghost that wandered in from the trees

And left their body behind

You slam the door

Sound slowly circles us–

The cicadas begin to wail