Cleaning out your desk drawer, a crumpled
Bit-O-Honey wrapper brings you back—
as when my sister, leaving the hospital,
cupped her hands to her face and closed her eyes
to breathe the last of you. Maybe you noticed?
I’ve been meaning every day to talk,
but something more pressing always calls.
Like yesterday: my thesis draft, all those
pages, outlined thoughts and claims made,
or how these words seem to wander off—in fact,
can I end this line without one more about you?
My thesis director says I tend to splice
ideas—or tear them apart. I’ll say
by and through or in and while, though sometimes
I’ll use with and without—the way you were
here and not as a doorknob. Just choose
and turn one, look outside: the Deerfield Fair
in late September, early snow hurrying
down. And on the grounds a winter booth
stocked with sweatshirts for passersby—
on mine a painted pink pastel kitten
with one tiny dot, black Monroe mole
speckling its cheek. Did I do that? A Sharpie
tip is all it takes. And since we’re speaking
of snow, when picking up your ashes—
the funeral director warning that your box
was brimming (and he should know the weight
of things reduced to soot)—when I held it,
cumbersome with all of you, and carried you
across the street, strips of Scotch tape straining,
edges peeling, my fingers slipped.
I tripped, dropped the damn box and you
spilled out and scattered into the snowbank,
the slush taking and giving back to the earth.