It rained for three days after she left.
This grey old downward condition
took on such an un-Spring-like character
that accumulated, as if it were snow.
When we first met,
I saw a certain pain in her, and surrounding her:
recognizable—a delicate glow in the pervasive darkness.
And intuited: Yes, I could love her.
That we might share griefs, as we shared coffee,
strong, but somehow not too bitter, between us.
There is a terribleness in this Irish prescience,
This passed-on gene, or spirit essence,
from one’s mother:
The always-knowing the orange ending of things,
even while living in the green of now.
Outside, on my deck, there is nothing alive.
My outside matches my inside.
Later, she leaves me a half-gallon of milk, in a bag, hung from the doorknob,
and the lump inside me, ever-present now,
expands: The balloon end of a cardiac catheter.
Up all night, every one of these nights,
sleeping each day away,
attempting to erase their blackboards
(cursive writing, indecipherable, in someone else’s hand)
only serves to confuse, body, and mind—
And my half-wild cat, who doesn’t know which meal is which,
howls, and sleeps, in shifts which suit my own.
This April has no right to arrive with white-yellow sunshine.
It should at least acknowledge the virus among us—remain grey, isolated, and aloof.
But the seasons, the weather—the broader climate—
Change.
Prove, over and over, they hold no compassion for us.
At five p.m., in a cloudless blue sky, the small silent half moon
looks down on me, and thousands of newly-dead people,
who must now mourn alone, their grief as still as distance.
