This Is How We Live

Amongst your silence, persimmons ripen
in paper bags like wedding rings     where you pin

the heaviest sheet, the clothesline dips    at the corner
of my eye, a book mark, all in our kitchen window view

the floorboards recite a soliloquy
of your mother’s footsteps, the same way you faltered

for words when you forgot
to trim her toenails       she walked for weeks with that paper

sheet of bone whittling its way into an infection

seven years later, you stand at the refrigerator
looking in as if you might find her

outside, our gutter fills with brittled leaves

you tell me             I wish I could call her
                   your arms spread wider than double doors

I leave my bowl at the table and go to you
unaware of the creaking wood

as I cross beneath the doorway      and meet you in this place

of salted yellow photo albums and backyard sunsets
landscaped to outlive us             I go to you

with me, you say nothing             this is how we live