Closure

Closure

What is my apology for poetry?

The empty briar is swishing

When I come down, and beyond, inside, your face

Haunts like a new moon glimpsed through the tangled glass.

                                                            Seamus Heaney

                                                            Glanmore Sonnets IX

Unmoored, the lack of you had undone me.

If my purpose was you

and now you are not

doesn’t it go without

saying I am not?

Withered and without?

            Your breath an hour after milk

            warm and sweet and almost sour

            Your clipped toe-nails scattered

            across the living room floor

            your hair still in the brush

            still on my dresser…

                        I haven’t combed

                        my own

                        since.

My mouth tastes like the bitter soap

my of mother.

But I haven’t said a thing.  The day before

you left you came to me

with a button to sew on your coat.

It’s the start of summer.  Who needs

a coat?

                        I haven’t

                        sewn it

                        and I won’t.

Buried without a button but who will know?

Not one soul came to me

and said it was missing.  Missing.  It’s not. 

You are, but not that button.  Not your hair.

Not anything you left when you left, though like milk-

breath when it’s still warm

            like the inside my of courage.

            Where I keep a button.

            Your little button.  It

            makes small little dots,

            threadless and slight.

            And a slim round circle

            I feel with my tongue

            against my jowls

            when I suck in my cheeks.