83

She smiles and says she loves the rain,
throws back her head and it fills here eyes,
drips from the wispy ends of her hair
Then the dash to the house

to change her clothes and stay in for the night
And sometimes, she says,
to open her window and take out the screen
so she can hear both the patter on the roof
and the pounding in the street

when she sticks out her head and leans on the sill,
as the drops find their way
through tops of trees,
And her desk lamp becomes a fireplace.

She cups her hands and holds a lake.
Waste down, she's inside,
knowing she won't climb out onto the roof,
as nice as it looks from the living room.

82

Sky, damp with gray
My pockets are empty, I left the front door unlocked
We've never both been awake this early
How could we?
We've never been awake, so I know you must plan
to live in the sunrise now, and for me to come
and sleep in the afternoon until you stop calling
and I'm the one who can't see in the dark.
Let me just take a picture of you against the bricks
of the building where, I guess,
you couldn't always be everything that you were
Not all at the same time

81

It takes an old blanket
deep in the closet
clinging to a smell made partly
by the stories that she would read to me
and her seat at the edge of my bed.
There will be easy days, she said,
and weeks that turn out well.
But now I know of the cold
crouching naked in the storm.
Years and moons repeat themselves,
enough that I forget
that a song was once good for only a tune
lyrics merely a shape of the mouth

80

His mother says he's special
knowing he won't believe her
that his chin won't lift an inch
but she rests her hand upon his back
and she's done her part.
Well, he was wrong today
and I covered my ears
so his disconcerted back in the seat in front of me
could mean he's sanding a new birdhouse,
concentrating gravely,
instead of digging his nails into his hands
and begging them to tell him why it happened that way.

79

From upstairs, I hear your suitcase clanking in through the door
The door locks, the room clears
You fill it with breath. Look around,
nothing's changed in a week, you've just forgotten the size
And thousands of people who need my money wait in silence by my window
as I carefully step forward
and tap my fingers on my leg
listening to the floor, creak
searching frantically for the staircase
before you fall asleep

78

It doesn't feel like last spring.
Why would it though, I guess.
So it wasn't the wet morning grass on the rim of my socks
or eating dinner with the sun,
but the tune you started humming when you looked up from your feet
and how one eye stayed squinted when you got beneath the shade

77

You're still a problem, and I'm still afraid to solve it;
I'm afraid I'll have nothing to do
when I give up, and sit up in bed,
That's when I need you around.

Say you're sorry, you don't want to change,
but you wish there was something else.
And I'll say, that's okay, just sit there a while,
I'll take you back home soon.

76

I'm digging through a pile to the ceiling
of shoes and books and furniture and little bits of string,
things that have grown up since I let someone see them
the way I do.
And I'm wondering if it was me or him who forced them to,
and what that means I should do tomorrow
after my cup of coffee.
But I ask you how you know you love
the girl who gets off the bus at your stop,
and without a pause, you say, I've never felt this way before,
then you bite into your apple, and you walk out the door.

75

Is it anything for us to skip the same step
on the stairs to our front door
if we've never been anywhere else?
Because you'd skip that step anywhere it was,
but it's here,
and so am I,
and I'll see you going up the stoop through the window,
then I'll get far away from the door
as you search your pocket for your key.

74

And sometimes the rain comes and shrivels the town.
I know that if you're not outside,
you can still hear it hopelessly pounding on your roof,
even if you don't stop to listen like me,
and that used to be enough.

73

Lately I just lay in bed
tapping my fingers in front of my eyes,
unable to see them in the dark,
afraid to fall asleep
and wake up from a dream you were in.

72

You push aside your empty plate
to look at your old neighborhood.
There was a wooden fence on one side, a metal one on the other,
trees here and here,
by your napkin and the edge of the table.
Retelling your game of kick the can,
it doesn't matter if I don't understand.
You tell yourself anyway.
And I listen to the picture and I make it in my mind.
At first, it's even you, between two fences, one wood one metal.
But then they disappear,
along with the can and trees, here and here.
And soon it's me, looking for your car
in the parking lot we drive by each day.

71

From plants, with hands, they made automobiles.
And trains, and planes, and rocket ships.
I was there, when they learned the could end the world
and dug themselves underground until they couldn't breathe.
I've borrowed the books, and I've sat with the wise,
and I've been a million places between the sea and the shore.
And I see you standing there
with your arms uncrossed
like you'll know what's behind you if you just look at me.
But I've been staring between stars too long.
At the empty black space where the things we can't see,
the things that question everything, might be.

70

I don't want to tell them,
I want everyone to know
that you and I are meeting by a river in the world
sometime in June.

It'll be a stream in the woods on the side of a road
to a village long burnt down, never fully grown.
We'll sit on rocks and flick the water,
because that's what we came to do.

And the voices of the people who know we're somewhere
are so far, they release grasp of our necks.
Even when they overlap in a pile
on top of a city smaller than freckle on your nose.

69

Tell the one thing that takes everything else
since the time I saw you leaning on the building
in a shirt you never wore again
and drags it all underwater
where it wasn't what you were saying
but the arm hanging from your hand on your neck
so I can move away and say
I don't remember you,
anyway

68

You put back up all the doors you knock down
even though you live alone
and you sleep with all your windows open
afraid that you'd be so happy if a bird flew in,
you'd have to trap it inside
afraid that it would look at you
with your knees together, dinner on your lap,
then go back to pecking at the corner of the ceiling

67

Years will be removed
so that the next day I see you
will be next to today.

I won't tell you I'm going east
to the sea
I don't want you to see it.

That way you'll put me in a taxi
though I'm really on a dock, far away
And the taxi will leave me in front of your house.

But I won't get off the sidewalk, not even from the dock
I'll sit and face the street
and you'll keep wondering what I'm thinking
until you don't know me anymore.

66

You could have asked anyone found on the street
when I still held your hand to cross it,
will one day her nails dig into her arm
her knees to her chest, rocking herself to sleep
on the cold floor next to her bed?
Yes, they would think; I don't know what they'd say
and I wouldn't have anything different
but a mother who asks
I don't feel better knowing I'm supposed to break my favorite things
But they can't care about everybody
They would hurt, too

65

Here was the barn
where I watched you burn all my clothes
then you sent me back to the house
to fill up buckets
and put out the fire

And the trees are tall or gone now
as I used to know them all
they seem to have shifted over
towards the sunset tinted evening

You can't keep up behind me as I advance
towards a black wheelbarrow that corrects my memory
my presumptions bury underground
as you stand in the patch of missing grass
and squint at the dirty barn

64

If we were told there's a way to see what we feel
we would look for it, even if it meant
watching a cave shatter around us
dropping boulders where sun still lived
over the kind of silence that comes
when the sound of the wind we hadn't noticed stops.
At least we wouldn't have to wonder
why we've been staring out our windows
and we're so tired our eyes are dry.

63

I'm taking you on a trip further than people go
where there's no one to drive by and see us
and nothing would be different if we were the only ones left

I'm bringing all the things we have to do
watch their colors fade
each time you see a different moon

I'm planning our return, I am,
to be the same time of day when we left
I'll remember when that was because the last sound that made it
through the basement walls are what made me want to leave

I'm going to be important
I'll brush a shoulder every day
and I'll talk about the place we were
though I won't know how to tell it right

62

You fight with me in the dining room
Everything I say is right
except I'm not leaning over a chair
with a glass in my hand and water forming on the outside
and a memory in the back of my eye
of people who weren't there long on one of many streets
kicking rocks that mattered into alleys and ravines
and lights that are only blurry streaks
You yell so loud you make yourself hate me
We stare so hard we're looking at ourselves
so you go to your room and pretend I locked you in
and all you can do is read
something that's not really about you

61

Your tie, and the way you know it isn't neat
tells me to believe everything you say.
That, and the way you look me in the eye
and tell me why you do those things.
I didn't want to see you meet my father
who knows so much, he's sad
because he throws shoes, and you won
with your hands in your pockets, modest grin.
And I followed his suit back home
and looked down when I saw him stumble
but he didn't look back at me anyway.

60

I know how to get on the roof of the house
I've just never done it before.
Because someday I'll escape from a city that burns
and find my way back here with ashes across my forehead
yet it'll look here the way it would
if I were coming in from the sun
and wiping my shoes on the doormat.
Every trinket in place, the same glare between the curtains.
Someday I'll need to see what I already know differently
and I wont know how to leave
I won't know how to leave.

59

What if I'd been different yesterday?
Intoxicated with a notion that everything I do is me
An epiphany that came in the time I gain
from being awake in bed too long
Because I could fly to Idaho,
and tell you I wanted to go for a walk in the country
I could be back today
sitting here, at the table
reading every article in the paper with coffee
while you open another box of English muffins

58

There's a presence in the fire;
Not the one below the mantle in the den
where they squeeze dining room chairs between couches
amused at the same discussion as the year before
and the amber glow touches every face,
But in the candle at the bedside
of the last one to head home.

57

We finish every book we start.
Even if we don't like it.
It makes us feel, complete.
But we didn't read the copyright pages,
or about the authors, who we hate.
Nobody said to,
and we know enough reasons why.
But we finish every story
because we've finished every one so far,
but we don't look for the epilogue,
we don't have to know it's there.

56

There's my building on the corner
You can leave me across the street
Just before you drive away, say something to me
Say something I can keep and fall asleep to
and remember from everyplace I go
so that you've said it in my kitchen,
in the library, on the train to the places that you don't know;
so that I've heard it over thunderstorms,
dinner conversations, quiet songs.

And I don't even remember your voice anymore.

Or what you wore, what you were doing with your hands.
All that's left is the words
dangling over my head.

55

I've never doubted that it's the walls
that decide I can hear car doors slamming
but not footsteps.
Getting back from the airport
and stumbling in from the bar
to a house on the street,
they sound the same to me.
They both accompany a man with blue eyes,
the one who mows his lawn on Sunday morning
keeping a complacent eye
on the skipping child on the sidewalk.
I hear him slam the door,
and I close my eyes and watch him
go into his house, and stay up for a while
to watch the cars I hear go by.