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