The pull of the bedsheet. The unexpected hardness of your bones crossing the room before opening the door. Without so much as a nod when the kitchen faucet drips, wears through the finish & then the sink itself, the tile below & beyond the underpinnings, the dreaming cicada, the taproot working its way down & down & down. From where the orange arrives in your hand you cannot say, same for the hurrying shadow of the only cloud for miles, one from which you’d like to draw your hands & drink. No more utterance but the will & last testament for your children, these strangers who spill as though out of nowhere.

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Despite its grace, September bends a little cooler & the letters spill from their cards, the telephone ringing less than it did before. I am wading through the nowhere melodies until the strange, distant note forces the room. Afterwards a Kleenex. Afterwards the beach & all the waters we ever swam. The kisses & touch & I cannot, simply can’t but once again shoulder everything that’s happened. The leaves make their slow goodbyes but in the shady woods we smell the snakeroot & then see the flowerheads. We forget now the storm of feathers there at home among the daylilies. We believe, for now, we stand a chance.

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I’ve been drinking less, or trying, as the lights of the telephone poles blink out. The lock of your hair off with the mail to Los Angeles &, because I wasn’t there (or so I’m told) was spared. A missing sandal. The open house & school supplies &, despite my worst scenario, I didn’t know you’d be gone so soon. The scars from surgeries. The sky mostly clean but the oregano & purslane still wet in this latest retelling of what & why. My little glimpse sitting through that night on the fire escape with your friend from California. The plantain lilies, the beebalm & wild bergamot. The cardinal back at it in the maple tree & the same joke, this time told by the one left behind. Our boy, nine & nine-tenths asleep, reaches across the night to make sure I’m still here.

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