Sunlight on broken glass inside your empty house
Is as jagged as the uncertainty
Nagging at my belly.
Are you gone?
You must be.
There are only dust motes and ghosts of your intentions
Here near your teacups drying in the kitchen.
I study the upside-down enameled mug,
The one with the rainbow kitten on it,
That Adrian bought in Prague,
And the empty silicon manatee tea-infuser,
We gave her for Christmas,
Both gutted like me.
Every artifact spells out you were just here.
You planned to reappear.
Andrew’s notes above the desk outline two more years.
That picture of my uncle cock-eyed is on the magnet editing board,
Amongst the parrot from Costa Rica, a Joshua tree,
And those two of Adrian reading in a red dress by the waterfall.
Why those, all old, I wonder.
A battered wet-suit is draped over the chair on the patio
That smells faint,
Mostly of, the sea.
A book from that bookstore in San Diego
That you loved
Rests on each bedside table.
A regency romance for Adrian,
A comedic fantasy novel for Andrew,
But both bookmarked
Only a few pages in.
I can’t quite remember,
Are these books from the list I recommended to you,
Or among the ones you recommended to me?
Are voracious readers really allowed to die,
So ephemerally?
The stained-glass penguin window Laura crafted for you
Is still in a crate, as are your framed family photos,
In the one room that you still haven’t unpacked.
There are sheets on the new mattress you both complained about hauling
Into the upstairs guestroom,
Waiting for some of us to visit.
Maybe us next, or maybe Angela,
Or Kathryn and Levi with a toddler in tow.
Adrian was already worried about the Thanksgiving menu
Meeting everyone’s needs.
Andrew’s voice still echoes in my head,
Our last phone call,
“You and Laura should come. It’s only a three-day dive trip.”
I wished, but we had a wedding to attend.
“Ah well, we’ll do it again in November or April. We can have a Google hangout next week to figure it out.”
But we won’t.
You are perpetually out?
That isn’t what these artifacts say.
These trails of you evidence so many things
We have left to do
And the hopes still in count.
How do I reconcile
These artifacts
With the evidence
Of your absence?
Is as jagged as the uncertainty
Nagging at my belly.
Are you gone?
You must be.
There are only dust motes and ghosts of your intentions
Here near your teacups drying in the kitchen.
I study the upside-down enameled mug,
The one with the rainbow kitten on it,
That Adrian bought in Prague,
And the empty silicon manatee tea-infuser,
We gave her for Christmas,
Both gutted like me.
Every artifact spells out you were just here.
You planned to reappear.
Andrew’s notes above the desk outline two more years.
That picture of my uncle cock-eyed is on the magnet editing board,
Amongst the parrot from Costa Rica, a Joshua tree,
And those two of Adrian reading in a red dress by the waterfall.
Why those, all old, I wonder.
A battered wet-suit is draped over the chair on the patio
That smells faint,
Mostly of, the sea.
A book from that bookstore in San Diego
That you loved
Rests on each bedside table.
A regency romance for Adrian,
A comedic fantasy novel for Andrew,
But both bookmarked
Only a few pages in.
I can’t quite remember,
Are these books from the list I recommended to you,
Or among the ones you recommended to me?
Are voracious readers really allowed to die,
So ephemerally?
The stained-glass penguin window Laura crafted for you
Is still in a crate, as are your framed family photos,
In the one room that you still haven’t unpacked.
There are sheets on the new mattress you both complained about hauling
Into the upstairs guestroom,
Waiting for some of us to visit.
Maybe us next, or maybe Angela,
Or Kathryn and Levi with a toddler in tow.
Adrian was already worried about the Thanksgiving menu
Meeting everyone’s needs.
Andrew’s voice still echoes in my head,
Our last phone call,
“You and Laura should come. It’s only a three-day dive trip.”
I wished, but we had a wedding to attend.
“Ah well, we’ll do it again in November or April. We can have a Google hangout next week to figure it out.”
But we won’t.
You are perpetually out?
That isn’t what these artifacts say.
These trails of you evidence so many things
We have left to do
And the hopes still in count.
How do I reconcile
These artifacts
With the evidence
Of your absence?
 |
| Artifacts |
where do you put pain? Nowhere. Everywhere.
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