YOU LEFT AND
the sun stopped shining
on all the lakes of the world,
gray clouds descending
like fog, the grass dried,
yellowed, so every photograph
turned sepia, instant nostalgia
for a present we possessed as past
but couldn’t walk backwards through
toward some meaning, some reticent understanding,
trace the last pink flower pressed
between pages of the family Bible,
this fragile reckoning written
in the parlance of love, this onionskin
memory, the words blurred,
smudged by too often turning
to the same page, never moving beyond
the stained crease of obsessive familiarity,
footsteps faint upon mahogany stairs,
the thermostat broken, the house empty
except for woolen blankets, heavy quilts,
wrought-iron beds, lumpy mattresses damp
with mildew—a talisman of loneliness—
not a single window, a single door
opening onto a garden,
some orchard made of light.
pea river journal 
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