untitled (for t.)

I still taste the night before.

Sentences draped where you
left them: across knees,
on the bedside table, covering
the valley of my breasts.

I want to cup you in
both hands and keep
you in a drawer with collected
fragments of paper. Like scrapbooked
petals, a vineyard rose or
a firefly in a bell jar.

This House

A doorhandle once pushed open
is no longer unbuttoned.

I look through where we lived.

Behind the keyhole, leftover
edges and ledges remain.

Crumbs of bread we ate
together are shoved in corners
by the new tenant's broom.

My hair is lodged between
pipes in the walls of this house,
or sleeping in the tub's mirrored drain.

Your fingerprint lingers on the
oven dial or the wall above
an empty room where our headboard
used to stand.

I'm looking for the things we left, here.
The words.

I'm breathing in the hallways.
In the oil stained garage.
Waiting for your headlights.