In the hallway, sounds.
The snap of plastic bags ripped open, cart wheels rattling under pill bottles rattling, and under that the nurses’ laughter, casual, for all the crisp staccato of their morning rounds.
Nothing of it makes me feel less alone, here by a window where the sun rose blank and white without my noticing.
Fire or ice? What a thing to waste a poem on.
At the end, both smoke and ice break in, creeping round the edges of the pane where caulk has cracked and splintered unto dust.
Dust falling like memories.
Or, have it the other way, if you like. Memories falling like —
Dust rising from a bicycle tire. Smoke rising from a small camp fire.
Rising with the cricket’s song, sacrifice to a summer a moon made in vain.
We hurled everything we had to her those summer nights, all that youthful joy that wasn’t even hope; when a night is full like that of crickets and sparks and beach grass waving, what is there more to hope for? We sent it up to her in woodsmoke.
On the window’s glass, ice like the pine needles I used to smell in summer.
In the hallway, sounds I do not recognize
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