My heart told my head she must still be here

here in the house where her life had shaped me.

 

Yes she would never pass this way again

but my heart told my head that these

markers of a life, the reclining chair

radio, the familiar curtains,

piano I cut my future on

these transient things must be passed on

to the world outside.

 

My heart would burst though it must be so

would burst for an answer

why she could not be here in the familiar,

though God knows I held her then

in the fabric of loss

 

gathered in the interim

before I passed the stonewall of

domestic death and wandered

like a stranded ghost on a patchwork of hope.