ONE MORE THING

 

There is always one more thing to retrieve on your way out the door. Yesterday it was your hat and gloves. Today you searched blindly for your keys, as if you had been suddenly dropped into a stranger's disheveled living room. Tomorrow, who knows? It seems you are always fumbling through coat pockets, grocery bags, and drawers, always turning to check behind you. Things, after all, have a way of piling up on their own, never quite where you left them. This is when living alone becomes most precarious. You must set friendly traps around the house, signposts, always placing things back where you picked them up. You must recognize patterns, follow your own footsteps with intent. Each morning in the doorway, you must pat yourself down before allowing yourself to leave, recognizing each small, familiar shape in your clothing; touching your own hand once, then again, just for good measure.

LEDGER

 

I was born with a list of books

I will never find time to read or to live;

I was born with the silence of their

pages pressed against my lips.

SCATTERED

 

So many different rains tonight,

their slender gray thoughts

scattered everywhere at once.

Perhaps the wind can somehow

bring these factions together;

perhaps by morning a consensus

may at last be reached.

IN REPLY TO YOUR QUERY

 

Ask me anything

you like. I will do my

best to remain

silent.

ALWAYS SOMETHING

There was always something

between us left unsaid,

a trembling silence unable to

carry itself across those

stuffy winter-white rooms.

There was always a pause,

always an ellipses undefined,

hovering like fragments

of speech between breaths;

the long, slow minutes building

monuments to themselves

while we waited, hardly aware

that we were doing so.

Whatever it may have been

has long since passed,

along with those others

we once referred to as selves,

two who would not answer

us now, no matter the words,

beautiful or otherwise,

we might choose to speak

or, knowingly, leave out.

NOT YET DONE

 

We are not yet done

talking, you and I. The pause

in our speech has simply

outgrown the words

that once contained it.

FIDELITY

 

She was always faithful

to you, she said.

It was only to herself

that she had sometimes

been untrue.