written and overused and plagiarized.

Most of all, if I had to pick a favorite,

I love you like waking up every morning and getting

to kiss your warm, kind face.

Knowing with certainty that neither of us are going

anywhere.

IPHONE NOTES

7:14 AM

We are quotation marks jammed up against one

another, the beginning to a poem I haven’t written

yet.

AFTER

After you left I realized there were so many things

I’d never know.

The sound of your younger feet walking

on linoleum, the feel of a Harley, the color of your

natural hair at 77, the smell of your house before I

filled it with mine.

I had to mourn a history I’d never bothered to write

down, family names that died with your mouth.

After you left it occurred to me that I never pictured

you leaving.

I thought time would wait until I was old enough to

negotiate.

After you left I began to love someone with a kind

heart. Someone that held hands with me in the

Niagara Falls state park and taught me how to slow

dance with vinyl records and peach wine.

I’d never thought sleeping across the hall from you

was a luxury until our conversations moved to the

cemetery or, more often, my car, at dusk.

Over a year after you left

I was still singing grievances, had to acknowledge that

you’ll never be able to meet him, my best love, my

final love.

Can you forgive my selfishness?

How far away I wandered when the doctor said you

weren’t coming back?

After you left there was only one thing I could

remember how to do. Here I am, doing it now.

It was the only way I knew I could talk to you.

After you left, three years after you left, I finally told

the page I think I know who I am.

And for a moment it felt like providence.

I SAID YOUR NAME THREE TIMES IN THE MIRROR

begging for a haunting, but all I saw was my own

reflection. So, maybe I’m the ghost. It’s been three

years and I’m still finding new things to say about

this. I wanted a haunting because that has to be better

than silence. This wound of living. I’ll throw the

plates myself if you just give me some goosebumps.

I’m desperate for contact and a desperate woman

never wants the right things. How do I break a mirror?

A promise? When the world is shutting down who’s

left to sell me a Ouija board? It didn’t always feel this

difficult. I didn’t always need to talk to you before

leaving the house. What am I supposed to say? I’m

sad. I miss you, and is it so wrong that I do? After all

of the space we converted into memory? I’m getting