483

My sister's daughter married
the young man with the cane
who she's been bringing around to the barbeques
since I was still living in Santa Fe
where I walked each night around the lake
talking to Martin who used to fly jets
and then worked in a flower shop

482

All the extra minutes on the days
are catching up to me.
I want to run
but I hold my sweat,
I can't bathe for three more days.

And I wish I didn't know
it'd be okay if you caught me.
You wouldn't even tie me up in a net,
toss me in a trunk,
or even tell me that you knew
I didn't really want to get away.

481

Mornings are so peaceful
when there's nothing to do
and they get inside my room

I'm under my roof like I'd be under a tree
and the walls must be a wooden fence
because there's the sun lying on my books
and my rug

and through the holes in the window screen
there's nothing between the wind
and the birds and the bed
where I'm lying down breathing

480

Wake up early to be with me in the morning,
I won't be back home all day.

Look at me loosening my tie
from behind your pink pajamas
with your big eyes
and folded legs

I see you sitting up in bed,
I'm too tired to stay up late.

479

Every time she becomes happy,
I tell her the city hurts my eyes
and she looks at the container she just closed
extra long before putting it back in her cabinet.

Instead I drive to where the houses
are built between the trees
but just as the lights from the city fade
the stars replace them, never letting me
be alone, outside in the dark.

478

You ask me what I do in the morning
and forgive me for not wanting to say.

It's not that my floor is covered in trash
that I walk through to get to the kitchen
and heat up a month old chicken for breakfast.

I'm afraid of how I'll feel
knowing you're watching me wake up tomorrow.

477

Just like I don't need to see
myself to understand my pose,
you always catch me staring at the ceiling
before you even reach the bottom floor
of your office building
where I wait and all I learn about you
when you come out of the elevator
is what you decided to wear today.

476

It can't be heavenly to know all our beginnings.
As if understanding how a tree grows
would turn my arms to branches, my legs to a trunk.

Or knowing what it is I breathe
would let me liven someone's lungs.

Heaven just gets further away,
we couldn't always see the sky.

475

Why should you get to use my name?
I may still live here when I'm old
but not because I have someplace to be,
here, every morning,
a parking spot, a person we both have to listen to
from opposite sides of the building.

You heard that I said something to
someone you see in the afternoon.
Well I'll go home to lay down with
someone who can tell how happy I am
every when my shirt is untucked
and I bury my pale face under the covers.

474

A bird sat on my roof
watching a plane go by

A slight twist of the head
for every few miles

Then it swooped into a tree
like it had just woken from a good dream

473

I made tea in the morning
and drank it in bed
watching trees change colors out the window
as the sky opened

Then you banged on my door,
your car holding down my driveway.
You'd driven all the way from Michigan
cracking your knuckles at traffic lights.
You were on your way when I boiled the water
and heard the invisible birds

472

You planned it all out really well, you thought.
You'll run out of money February when you're eighty-two.
Now you're seventy-nine and you feel alright and you need an excuse to want to die.

If you could ask for help,
all you would hear is how you never had a
wife or a kid.
That's made you sad at times,
but you're too used to knowing how it's going to feel
when you open your window on warm nights
to remember who else is in the house

471

Sometimes in the suburbs
a crater falls on the next neighborhood
and everyone stops talking about the government
and how glad they are they stopped going to church

No one knows what to do with it
because it doesn't seem dirty enough to clean
or clean enough to try and teach to live life more carefree

470

Don't talk to me in terms of inches.
I don't want to think in cups of water
or tree branches.

There's nothing important about your crooked mouth
or the little cracks in your voice.

On your way our you straightened the picture on my wall,
but once I painted the whole house green
and tomorrow I can sell it
to where the speak a different language,
drive to the first city.

469

Taking her house from her
with all her clothes and furniture
I've made myself so simple.

So easily the one with the bright pale face
when I walk by her in the street
wearing her old shoes
asking how she's been.

468

You get ready for work in the dark
just like your father did.

You wonder if your neighbors
are all afraid of you, too,

because outside's only light in the summer
and no one wants a part time friend
so you clip your bushes with a machine
too loud to hear the people pass.

467

You never had too much hair on your back,
never stood too tall and lanky, or too heavy in the waist.
Never too loud at a party with jokes too dull,
never the one in your college dorm who'd never had a kiss.

Nobody ever worried when you grew old alone
because you greeted all the men at the barber shop,
all the ladies at the market,
and the neighbors were always happy
to let you cook them dinner.

And even you didn't think it was right
to love a girl so young,
she was only just out of school,
only just realizing what she would do
and you didn't want to touch her, oh
your hand were so dry and tired
but she wasn't like a daughter, not a figure of a child,

and when you clutched your own wrists, she said
one day you'd both be dead.

466

Mot of the time it's as simple as
summer is when it's light enough
after dinner to take a walk
to the park where the kids
and the dogs all are

That's when I wish you were gone,
our from under the bridge at the lake
drilling tiny holes from underneath
and waiting for someone to step on them,
blocking the sun

465

I'd see a dark hole where the sun is
just a telescope lens reaching far past
where by then I've decided the dead people go

I could never understand
the children jumproping in the street
sweating in the heat
where the world is so dim

464

I want to see my face
in someone who's hands
I hardly recognize,

put her in my house
and see where she walks,
if she touches something I haven't touched in years,
goes for the drawer that's jammed shut,

understand the way she turns the pillow on the couch
so that the zipper can't be seen

463

I wish I could tell you how I sat in the clouds
how small you were from there

I couldn't even find your town
looking at you now with the sky behind your head

I don' think I'll ever see you again,
your face so weary,
your stance too tall to be so relaxed

462

You know coming would be bad for you
when the sour smell of moldy carpet
pressed on the backs of your eyes

Your mother's old bed
still dressed in sheets
browned and wet from the ceiling leaks

She climbed in through the window
and froze in the cold
never having to see you leave

461

Who will appreciate
your routine of tea in a paper cup
after rolling the old folks back to their rooms

from your thin blue pants
and walking sneakers, you know
you never planned to stay in one place so long

You just couldn't part with the view
from the room of the old man who always
wants to read to you

460

You didn't seem bothered
by the color in my cheeks
like I'd been somewhere with a lot of sun.

Then I was the one with someplace to be.
You were still so happy in your chair,
I left as the child I only came back to see.

459

I think I witnessed your first day on earth;
you were reading on the backyard porch
that we never used even after the summer
the wasps built their nest there.

458

It didn't take a new house
or even new furniture,
just a new spot for the keys,
different clothes on my back and on the floor,
some flowers for the table,
some patience to open the windows in the morning

because the neighbors just put up a new fence
and my old friends don't all live here anymore,
you never kept the same favorite band,
people finally stopped talking about the war.

457

In the morning there's no time too late
to sleep the rest of the day.

As good as walking up to the sixteenth floor
and waiting in the stairwell
until the office closes.

456

Even your body won't follow you
as you float through your mother's house
never wondering why the cat
is in the cooking pot

455

All the voices mixed with sounds
of clinking glasses,
mellow jazz accompanying chatter more normal
than silence as the elderly begin to grab their coats.

They all seem to know
how it feels when you're falling from a plane
and realize you're getting further from the ground,
breathe with relief and stiffen again
on your way up through the atmosphere,
when at least before you knew
you'd stop somewhere eventually.

454

Your patterns must be built into my brain.
I may not have ever seen your neck so far from your waist
but I can't find any questions
in the shadows of the room
where neither of us have ever lived,
though it seems that all the others have.
A tired woman sighs, and we can only look.

453

You came inside the small diner
and it was a new time of day,
the sky past late afternoon,
but an understanding that the sun
was behind the clouds
and could appear if it wanted to.

You squeezed the water from your hair
as I watched you scan the room for me.

452

On one of the walks that end where they started
done only to be out from the inside,
you asked me how the wind
got so cold as the ocean
when the air's so hot it drips down your bones.

I said it was something I knew nothing about
and you answered by closing your eyes,
lifting your chin until your hair blew
and then slowed and landed on your back.

451

The flight of stairs up to your apartment
just something to get over with,
like following your walk,
your head sitting on your neck
like an egg in the carton,
over to the corner in your kitchen
where you pointed at the
painting wrapped up in cloth,
then you looked down at my feet and then at the door.

450

I want to feel sorry
for the cows out in the rain.
If only they would move
or look at me lovingly
instead of standing so still
staring down at the grass.

449

Your blanket and sheets never quiet go together,
you know it's because the blanket is there in your dreams
as an article of clothing, a cloak,
an umbrella, a pocketbook, it was all my idea,
so I sleep well at night.

448

You know how simple you are
when you walk around
with your hands covering your face.

You'd laugh at the pictures they take;
they didn't mean for all of them to look the same.

447

I wouldn't have time to watch the kitchen all day
and make sure no one eats the food
and the floor squeaks in every room
and I keep glass bowls on wobbly tables.

But if you're quiet, you can all stay on my roof
just as long as no feet
hang over the windows.

446

I like the sounds you make,
soft steps up the stairs,
deep sighs and your breath collides with the air,
but I want you to move

I like the way you smell,
like tree bark and wine,
when you drop all your bags,
but I want you to move

445

Everybody knows, all my fingers
and limbs and the soft space on my neck
where you pushed down and I started to choke

They know that the whole city
blinks at the same time I blink
and sleeps when I sleep
and no one's allowed to admire the trees
unless I can admire them too

444

We've known how to dig holes
since the worms first peeked
their heads out from the dirt.

Our fingers were finally big enough
to draw the world
filled to the clouds with bones.

But as long as we can still skip down the road
to the store not far from home,
we know the sky can't go on without us.

443

I'll walk faster if it means
I'll have to wait outside your door
because I love
how nothing seems to change
where the sun hits your stoop
and you take off your shoes

442

It's my fault I let you lend me money
for lunch on the road,

that I even ended up alone in a car
with you, when your eyes to the side mirror
makes me angry anyone could ever share anything.

I slouched down, I'm still so much taller than you.
How we could be loved the same by anything.

441

Is it still ancient after
it's handled with tools handled by tools and tools
surrounded by glass, the only of its kind,
inches thick

Once it laid with the same things
that make up your yard,
but all you can find are skinny twigs,
dry dirt, and the same bush that blooms each spring

440

Everybody told me that
the colors of the world
would dull
but I haven't slept in days

My skin's never looked more graceful
rolling over my elbows as I unbend my arms
and when I mistake your glare in the window
for a sunset, I wish I could keep my eyes still.

439

The road won't chase the mountain
as it slowly shifts back to the sky,
but nothing will ever grow fast enough
to block your view of the cars
standing on top of the highest climb,
even if you're so far it'd take
the rest of your time to walk there.

438

I went to see the church's ruins,
to reach and touch its age,
rebuild it without having
to change it with my hands,
and wake up the resting people,
tell them it's back and it'd open again.

You're so young and full to look at,
I can't imagine you unreal
or dated or a bunch of things
I mixed together in a dream.

Nothing impossible can exist
in the same place as you,
so I'll come home when I'm tired
and I'll tell you what I saw.

437

You realize you're the only one on the train
who's happy to hear the baby cry,
for it's an excuse to stay awake
and sit still with your hands on your lap for a while.

436

If you were this far away
on the ground, you'd notice
that as you were born,
naked owning not even a name,
you'd never get back to me.

Grateful every spot on the ocean looks the same,
bomb the island and turn around the plane.

435

It's spring and then it's winter
and then it's spring and then it's fall
and I know that it's coming,
it's the most important thing because
you weren't with me at the bar last night,
and you'll never know what I wake up
looking at in the morning,
white sheets I'm afraid to dirty,
cold wood floor pressing up on the balls of my feet,
but you know whether the sky let the birds through today,
and so has everyone we've seen.

434

You like to talk about social issues
at dinner with people who you just met,
decline offers to pay for your dinner
and go back to your apartment
to lie on your belly
until it shrinks back down.

433

Have you always leaned in
doorways like that?
The person who taught you
you can't just come in must have
been the reason I don't want you to

432

Always looking for a secret room in the house,
a hidden door you just never noticed,
you're waiting to move the furniture
until the neighbors die or decide to stay
and your daughter moves
and you've already forgotten what the kitchen floor looked like
before it was retiled.

431

You waited downstairs for me to get my jacket
and I went out the door before
you realized I was ready to leave

430

I can only love what I remember of your voice
and the clumsy way you walked when I knew you

I always think I'm staring at you on the street
because I know I wouldn't know you if I saw you

429

The only air is a little wind
on the sun-warmed water
from the grass on your feet.

All builds up to the time of day
when you push air out of the way
and try to catch your own breeze.

428

I was taught I was delicate like an egg,
my skin just a materials when my thought leave my bones at night.

I could be a wire for electricity,
I'm no more resilient to sharp things
than my dinner meat or a pillow is.

Wood touches metal and my hand's on the knob,
I'm last night's clothing thrown onto the bed.

427

It's when I recognize
the spectacle that my eyes are further
from the ground than they used to be

that your hand hangs flimsily in mine
like a piece of cloth
just after I unfold it from its neat drawer
and still my elbows stiffen and I straighten my neck

426

The musk of your jacket gets into my nose
and presses on the backs of my eyes
tricking me into thinking I am tired
enough to stay sitting with my face in your neck

425

You couldn't ever force yourself to the airport
where at least there is an escalator
you could stand on for a while
until you got somewhere you couldn't get down from
without at least remembering you were higher
and then if your still wanted to go back to bed
it'd be a little lighter out when you got there.

424

With the grass as my bed
I won't be able to choose
just one side or the other
or if I'll face one wall or the other.

And when I wake up,
I won't go down the same narrow chute of stairs
into the living room where I'll grow old.

423

Find all the materials
that let me see the square of sky
above the desk and the chair.

I took a blanket from around my shoulders
and hung it over it.

422

You make me think I don't exist
when you pull a small tree from the dirt
and plop it down right next to me,
its roots gripping its new ground.

How we'd never heard it described before
goes away when you say you'd never have known
if I hadn't sat so far in the sun.

421

Look at me from where nothing
you can put your hand on
will be too smooth.

They taught you how to cover your face
when someone's about to hit you,
and you can't remember what your arms felt like
before muted voices echoed through their veins.

420

You squeeze my neck until my face turns red
from across the room
with a tender grin that loves me.
You don't realize your own hands

I explain I must have gotten too much sun
when you inquire what's wrong,
then you release me and go on

419

I was born where how can anything be
if I 'm not looking at it
or don't feel my breath bounce off of it

Where a mirror doubles the world in size
and it's not that big,
I can decide who the first person
who ever looked at me was

418

I wish I made your beautiful
as you think you are.
I stuck me head to far out of the water
and there you were,
clean, covered in skin,
looking up at the sky and smiling.

417

The day after four years of her life,
a new train came and wouldn't take her home
unless she asked nicely

Once in grade school, she was asked
why she was so shy, and why she wouldn't come
all the way outside

Later that day, she thought she liked
the way everything moved
when she wasn't a part of it

416

Could you have done it better
now that the sun is up all the way?
You waited for its highest,
thinking it was hours ago

415

You can sit down in a clearing
with your head sticks out over the trees

I can watch you from the top of a hill
so far that I can't hear you swat down a plane,
just watch like watching a storm from inside.

Then in a step you can reach out your hand
and pluck me off from where
I stand and put me on your shoulder, sitting
back down on the ground.

414

No one is a reason for her swollen arms.
They do their jobs all day,
stopping only to eat at the cheapest place

She floats above crowded streets,
her feet grazing heads,
but she didn't come thinking that she'd need help

413

Your spine uncurled to line up
with the back of your chair,
surrounded by air, I clung on
to my own arms.

No one asked me if I wanted
pictured of burnt faces from your
mantelpiece to hold so you could
sit comfortably in your living room.

412

If I make you marry a doctor
because he makes more money than me
and I say you deserve for your kids to be
as well dressed as you'd always dreamed,

don't find me on a dim morning
to try to wonder with me.

I know I could have had you
every sunrise if I wanted to.

411

Medicine was never my first thought
when you climbed out the window
ans my stomach ached.

Who else would need the way
you'd lean over the bed
in the mornings, already clean,
and wake me with the weight
of your palms on the mattress?

410

Just because you'd always
wear your tie to go fishing
and make me repeat why
each time your patted me on the back

Just because you'd bring your briefcase
when you took me for a hike
and had me hold it when you
laced your shoes so it never hit the ground
and made me repeat why
each time you laughed and shook your head

409

They gave me a dog to keep me busy
I raised him best because I had nothing else to do
and no one knew what a good job I did
or that it was as important
as a newborn child,
a deadline and an office party,
the secretary and a new suit

408

Most of the time, I forget to keep up with you
and you freeze into the position you're always in
when you've been standing too long and have
no walls to lean on

Until I catch up and let you move
remembering I was looking for you.
You stretch out all your limbs
and have to follow me because
I have somewhere to go.

407

I even told you where I went the day
when I stormed out on you.
You, wearing your slippers and the baby in your arms

Now when we drive by the cider mill
and see the rock where I said I sat,
you wonder what I look like alone,
and even ask me if I wonder it too.

406

You can't understand why I can't read
the scratches on the coffee table
you put there with a fork.

I just don't want to admit I get it-
you're wrong every time,
but your eyebrows point stiffly down
in assuredness that makes you look
like a little girl about to cry.

Still, if I could make you know
that I don't remember when we met, I would,
so I wouldn't have to be the only one who leaves.

405

Anyone's hands would look new to you.
You've never traced the creases of their skin,
wondered if you found all of them,
would it look just like a hand again

You've only buried your own in dirt
and listened to them anxiously explain
why you can't live without them

404

How could I do anything
but watch the first plane I've ever seen
take off
even though now I live
just a mile from the airport
and there will be a thousand more

403

You couldn't fit into even the least clear pattern
when you learn the science of twigs on branches.
The pictures living on the wall
couldn't tell me what to say to you
this time when you came home

402

The box I'm going to bring to you is empty,
nothing you'll find to talk about like you'd hoped.
I won't wear an interesting shirt,
and my hair will be the same old way.

I will be calmer than such silence allows.
Tell me that I broke the rules.
Why don't you just ask that I go?
You'll want to cross your arms but they're already crossed.
I'll sit down and let you stand so that
you don't think I really wanted a reason.

401

I never tried to look for
the bells that ring each morning
by my house ten miles into the woods.

I'd rather just go in to town
for lunch with you in the diner
for the pleasant waiter's company.

400

Behind clean glass windows
things that can't be wanted too long
before they shrink into pebbles
and form together to one sheet of rock
when you feel them under your feet.

399

Turn off your alarm clock, pet your wife awake.
Did you know it's in the air?
The kids fell asleep to the television screen.
All the buttons broken,
you unplug it and they wake to your smell
that is enough for now
as your wife runs downstairs
to answer the phone.

398

You didn't try to understand
what it must have been like
for be to be lose at sea
for years and years.

Just said, well I'm here now,
and you were right to think
that made it okay

397

On the day so calm and warm
it made up for all of winter,
you left a box of candy
in the hole in my tree
like you could only leave
if I only remembered you
when the breeze was just enough
to tickle my skin

396

Hearing knocking on the door
for the first time since I came up here
couldn't shock me more than the first time
I opened my eyes nor could your
hand on the frame and some one face
nor that I let you in.

395

You don't know all the places you go
when you disappear for days
and return with one more hat
one less coat

There was a lot of world to see, you said,
you'd need me to be sure of nothing but the sky.

394

Underneath ice and snow
I could be with a woman with soft warm hands
and a mother's voice
not in its words or sound
but the heavy eyes that deliver them
telling me it's okay if I want to close mine

393

I was alone in your cupped hands
as you brought me to the stream.
I was an insect in your sunlit land,
and your palms felt softer than and piece of ground
I'd run my hand over when I was a girl
when it was always sunny even though
you only let in a peep of light through your fingers

392

We work in the building without and elevator,
and all come up out of breath
from the ten flights of steps
and sit down at our desks.

The staircase is narrow, the stairs red
and the echo stops short at the thick walls
only making the sounds of my feet,
always the first one there.

When the sun is out and the windows
in the office are open wide,
we talk about it
as if we don't have to see it again tomorrow.

391

If it's cold enough, I won't even take
my hand out of my pocket for you.

That's when you disappear,
and I'm still alive though I'm a child,
and I'm old at the same time
if I can stand completely still
and not have to feel my voice in my throat.

390

Having to apologize to you
when you get stuck
walking behind me in a crowd,
staring at the back of my head,
which I've only seen once
on a girl who now sleeps in a bed
that I used to wake up in

389

One morning, a man with a toolbox
in his hand knocked down my door
calling I know you're home
and I crawled out
from behind the couch

He said to hold these screws
and not to move
and listen to what I say

Spent the day building a new door,
then asked me where the kitchen was
sat down at the counter
and poured himself a glass of milk

388

I was sure you'd be awake to hear the rain.
You told me once that you lay still to let me sleep.
My nudge didn't touch you
as I heard footsteps outside.
You wouldn've heard them if you weren't so tired.

387

When you put a house over me
and grow to be as tall as it,
I'll have to call you by your name

to make it up to the top floor
where you left on your hair dryer
next to the dripping sink

386

I hope she doesn't live where curving roads
pile on curving roads

When only tops of state buildings are visible,
they never reach the ground

She couldn't bare a house
with the door underground
in the fall when the concrete turns the clouds heavy.

385

Tonight everyone at the pizza bar is here alone
except for you and I,
the only ones who do not speak.

I remember there's no one else across from you
though you can look at your hands all you want
I know mine are more alarming
when they reach for your reticent glare.

384

You only talk to two-eyed children
who think they can see through their feet.

No one believes your stories of when
you crushed cities with your hands
while angels whispered their demands
to you above the clouds.

Fifty years ago you'd listen to you
without distracted nods
or going about your day.

383

I grew up in the back of a moving car.
I never saw anyone twice
or the same building twice
or remembered a street from long ago.

The first person to notice me
owned a fruit stand at an empty intersection.
He gave me a peach for free
and told me not to miss my flight.

382

Even when I say the fisherman emptied the sea,
it'll be more true than what you tell me
will happen tomorrow when the paint's on the table
and I'm halfway there.

381

Old can't be the worst thing
on your kitchen shelf.
What good are shining legs
when brittle bones are only delayed,
and you have to know.

You don't like neat piles any better
when they catch your eye from the shelf over the sink.

380

They closed a road that I know,
said it's not that I know one less thing
but a million more

Because the birds don't notice the cars are gone.
Why would anyone look down?

379

I feel it on my skin
when somewhere, you touch a napkin,
a door handle to a cab,
a book you just picked up to skim.

My shoulder never knew your hand
through the coat of salt
that sanded me smooth
and slid me back under the door.

378

I want to be blind to things that break,
things that are loosely stapled down,
round things on rooftops,
things I only cared for when they were new.

I want to cover your face and watch you sleep
and love things that never change.

377

You'll be in the pocket of the earth
with my wallet and pen and that old doll,
all the things I didn't find
in the last place I looked. Forgave myself
because I tried and never thought
of them again.

376

You left for years at a time.
We weren't always under the same sky
or and sky sometimes when we were asleep
and didn't wake up surprised to see walls.

And then sometimes between years,
on the same patch of grass,
we'd sit and whistle to the trees.

375

The day I left to find you,
everyone turned identical
in the market down the street
on every stop on the train,
every character in the books
with the same face.
It was you I looked for so you everywhere.
I asked no questions and never searched again.

374

I live for the crack in your voice
that turns your eyes
to your feet
to the nearest door
in the middle of the desert
where I never even tried to follow you

373

You keep walking with rocks in your shoe
if there is someone next to you

And when they're planted in your foot,
you say that they were always there.
You never thought to stop.

372

I can't hear the rain on your window.
It never makes a sound when it lands on trees.
It could just be that it's coming down lightly
or that your house is just really far from mine.

When I used to fall asleep to taps on the glass,
I never questioned that you were too.

371

I took the long way back to where
you live with all my things,
but when I got there, just kept walking by
until I wasted enough time to go back home,
my candlestick on your windowsill enough to get me there.

370

Tell me how the seasons always
change just in time
when I'm too tired
to shovel any more snow,
and at noon you're still asleep inside.

The last sunny day we needed
to see the grass, and you get up early
to clean the gutters.

369

When the colors of the morning math the ones of the night,
we put sheets over the clocks
and forget how long we've been asleep

Then sit with each other in the street
that doesn't remember the last car it saw

368

Nobody ever know of our neighborhood.
No reason to drive through,
and the visitors knew everything we knew.

Even now that the trains run underneath
there's no big road to spread our name.
Just every few minutes the dishes shake in their drawers
for people reading magazines
and checking the time.

367

The hand that wrote the note to me
did what it said it would as long as it existed.

But it's span was not so long as my trip
to the other side of the world
and back home where a new lock was turned by arrow key
that seemed to fit the curves and wrinkles in hands
I didn't recognize,

366

You're as likely to be living in the shed in my yard
as you are to ever be at my front door.
In winter you will find it's too cold
to live in there.

365

I thought that all there was
was you in my living room.
I didn't hear the rain until it stopped,
and then it was only you,
sitting on my couch and then learning
the creaking noise I always hear
when someone stands up.

364

You didn't hear the plane crash in the mountains,
you didn't even fidget in your seat,
and if you did, you would have even if
the only things to ever burn were the trees.

363

All day you walk just behind me,
and I am tempted to turn around.

I haven't gotten used to being followed
even though it's been since first I was born.

I get home and you ask me where I've been
and I have to watch you watch me speak.

362

A noise so loud, it covers the earth
comes up through the rug of your top floor apartment,
shakes the rocks at the peaks of mountains
and shifts the darkness at the bottoms of the seas.
And there's a distance from where it'd sound
like the radio playing in the next room

361

You were holding onto branches
as they whipped in the rain,
for though you couldn't see a thing,
by morning you'd be in the same place
if the tree was strong enough to hold you, too.

360

I never want you to know
that we're no more a part of you
than the dust that catches to your skin.

The air is different in the mountains.
If you lived there, it'd be the thing you breathed.

359

I don't stop to look at glowing trees,
I don't sit outside just to be beneath
a dimming sky as it floats by.

They deserve my faith in them
that they can be extraordinary any time,
and I want to go home and be inside.

358

When it's the holiday and I know you're home,
I walk down the main road
hoping I look like I come from here
to the people driving by who don't.

They won't remember me by the time they park,
but we've been gone and I think you'd recognize
how to maneuver the uneven sidewalk.

357

I forget what I've told you
and let you see.

When I show you where I keep the dishes,
I'm flattened out
beneath who I can be
when when I'm whole from every angle

356

The sound that sits on surfaces
when painted feathers
straight line to the ground
woke you as if light were momentary.
You insisted we stand next to each other.

355

It would be okay that you don't pick up your phone anymore
if you'd ever picked it up before
when you could be anything
and said no one else knew,
just like there was no one else
you'd never lie to.

354

You never turned anyone away
who wasn't buying anything,
just coming in from the cold.

In winter no shop was more busy than yours
and in winter nobody knew who you were.

353

There was so much to be done-
I never had to try so hard to pass the time

If you didn't know when, you should have just said
you weren't coming back

I'd go too if I knew
that someone would tell you where I went.

352

I didn't know how to let us be alone
standing in the living room
with all the tiny furniture
and the ceiling getting lower.

When you put your head on my shoulder
and I went to pull the curtains closed,
you must have though there were people outside
and you stuttered out of the room.

351

Before you see anything else
that you may one day need,
close your shutters, their voices and hers
will suffocate without the air.
Make your clocks and boxes all you need,
and put them somewhere they won't move.

350

You should've known that even the ground
can be less permanent than the snow
if you can dig a hole

and you can put in it a note
asking why you stopped eating
with her at the dinner table.

349

There were thirty of the same
blanket at the store,
but I took home the one that had always been mind
like everything I've ever had or lost

348

I just walked out of the room-
I wonder if I'll remember it
the first time I'm alive while you are dead.

But there's a table in the path
back to the room I left you in
and I'd rather keep going than get on my knees
and let you think you've moved an inch
since I left you standing there

347

Don't apologize for climbing the trees
and ribbing out some of their leaves.

Even the willow in your yard
will grow the same once you are gone,
won't miss you more than it'll miss
the ones who one day cut it down.

346

You didn't have to hide,
just keep me tired
enough that I won't look
in the drawers you know I'll never need

345

Once I was a truck driver,
and once the highway emptied and never again did I see a car,
and I was still worried about the traffic in the mornings,
always waiting for a woman to come
walking down the middle lane
and stopping to ask if I'd seen her purse.

344

They'll never rip you from your chair
but the floor may be pulled out from under you
and the paint on the walls may peel and curl
when all you did was never leave

343

They've forgotten about the room they own
in the house I've lived in since I was born
and the padlock they put on the door

They may be dead like all my
childhood friends who moved away
before I could write down their names

But we just put our ears to the door
and echoes form the shape of the walls

342

It's too tangible to live so high in the air.
I think it must come down sometimes
but never when it's late at night
and my arms are out, ready
to break its fall

341

I'd frame you for a murder,
put a gun in your hand
and watch you figure out how to hold it

if it would make it easier to look at you
when I say I won't be back for a while.

340

With the trees so still on the white sky,
they could have been made of steel
and a hurricane could have been coming though
until a bird shook one of the thin branches

339

One day too late for changes,
I learned the sky had always been wrong.
Then it was easier to watch them take down all the trees
that had lived beneath it so long.

338

In the waiting room, no one would tell you
what room your mother's in.
Everyone is lost but no one quite as lost as you
so stay until she's long dead anyway-
until they give you a room of your own
and can't remember why you even came in the first place.
They'll hand you a fresh blanket and you won't have a word

337

If you have to be missing an arm
for me to reach the peak
so high I'll have to drop all my things on the way
then you will, or at least I won't ever
help you look for it.

336

You never used the furniture,
said the living room reminded you of growing old
and I agreed until I mended all the tears in the curtains
and took down the dirt infested shades.

When it was all done, I invited you in
but you took the other hallway to the door.
Now you can't help but walk by it every once in a while,
I wish you knew like I do how the light reflects off of the floor.

335

It used to make me sad to think
about dying so I stopped
thinking about dying so much and was
happy for a while.

I think it can only work so well once
like the rock you didn't think would skip that far.

334

The worst was returning
from the moon with nothing left to do.
The first time I couldn't be amazed
by the sunset from my backyard.

333

The first people to notice me
knew me as the
little kid on the tambourine
behind the wedding singer

and I didn't know then
that I'd never meet another kid
who had to do that

Even the bride's mother
though I was a sight

332

When we woke the air was dry.
Our torn skin cracked
when it touched anything but itself

Somehow I was surprised when the outside
didn't cure us immediately
and the first thing I tested it with
were your hands

331

I never liked big rooms
empty but for me and you
or heavy with hellos,
But I was born in a small room
in a small town that you know
because you were born there too.

That's what I think of
when I think of you,
what you've done, what you can do
and your steps echo in the high ceiling
over the big room.

330

Small square windows in a row
give glimpses out to the outside trees
for prisoners to use sparingly.

Between the boxes of flat branches
hides one who got to the other side.
His hand lies just above the frame
where the other half of the sun is cut off.

329

It must have been a month since you last loved me-
I can't say I've changed too much all year.
Maybe you got buried underneath the snow
and closed your eyes and saw me
because there was nothing else to do.

If that's what happened I wish
you'd had your harmonica
and the sound had gone in you
with nowhere else to go

So when they dug you up
and lifted you and sent you back home to me
I'd be waiting on the couch
right where you left me

328

Even when I come home in the
early morning through the
hole in the roof I never
told you about, you'll never be surprised

You'll just roll over in the bed to face me
like each time before
when I would come in through the door

327

I fed my dinner to you enough to know
you weren't really fixed

As my skinny arm would bring the fork to your mouth,
you'd look at me as if to say
sorry, but it has to be this way

326

You sounded so pure when you said all you want
is something that's no matter what
until I let you know you had it

and then when I called you from the kitchen floor,
you made me wait until I loved you more.