Unit C has been locked since winter
You are everywhere
Here your Sox hat on the pillow that used to smell like you, here where you breathed me
Where we’d lie awake talking about how nothing means nothing
Your laundry quarters in that ancient plastic ziplock bag on the table
I am suddenly doing the math about how many will be left after I wash my clothes tomorrow
I don’t want to meet the day that this little dirty bag is empty
And I hold this decrepit piece of plastic over the trash and resist
Another piece lost
Used up
Expired
Like you
Like every departure
Drowning that returns
In bags of quarters and your toothbrush
Which I have been using since the morning after the call
Disgusting
Intimate
Sharing you.
I want to
Hold, hold
Tiny scraps of paper and all of your
Michigan blue
The rhythm of the blade in cruel
Amputation
How do you sweep a place of its ghosts
When you want them to stay?
theme and variations 