to ____, after a year

i forget how comfortable,
and familiar
your rooms are.

i was stung
by the hovering happiness.

bit by the me
who still haunts your corners.

i buried her in june.
i buried her in suddenly embracing,
encouraging -
the wealth that she hid.

in her death -
and more, your death -
i found myself.
and didn't know what
to do with it.

oh, the severed pain
the amputated aching
of all that you are
and were
and still seem to me.

i wish that you could see
the profound,
the trivial
quiet
screaming
barbed and silken
ways you're still wound
in my days.

i have traveled
from the door of your room
around a world,
a lifetime,
and find myself
at your door again.

in my past month
of silent detachment
i settle to the spring cleaning
of soul, of self.

oh, do you
realize for what
it was
it was everything?
my heart was my own
until you took it
so smartly, tender
and intent.

i gave you what i could.
at the time it was some
spectacular
lunch-trade acquisition,
deal.

through old windows,
long-washed
in a season of tears,
i see the days clearer.

though it's misunderstood,
i call you my first -
and so-far-only.

you: the axis,
the fulcrum of my past,
my growing.

my life in measures,
before and after
the coda of you.