Not so cold that I want to stay indoors.
Instead, that vacancy between fall and winter.
The sidewalk here is crooked, broken,
entire slices of cement missing.
To walk, it is best to look down.
I remember when I fell, my finger broken,
my palm thickened with tangled branches
that forced two fingers to bend as if looking away.
Since he has died, I have awakened to a body broken
more damaged than I knew.
The bones of my legs creak like floorboards. I can’t find
the body I knew before wipes, pills, the save him, save him.
I didn’t hear my body ask me to look up, look
at my mouth turned downward,
one side in a perpetual frown, the other still stupidly smiling.
Why was the left side of my face shutting down?
My eye closing, its lid covering half of the pupil.
I did not see it.
Or is this the divide between seasons, a caregiver’s sleepwalk, the I am and I can’t?
I didn’t hear my body ask me to look down, notice
the purple bruise on my calf, notice
the heavy wood bedframe I walked into.
I must have been helping him tie his shoes or button his shirt
or hanging on while he tried to stand.
Or is this the divide: loving/furious? afraid/furious?
I wanted to pour myself into his spaces.
I wanted to break from him like a rib.
How many selves fit into love’s nesting?
Or is this a lie? Or rather, not the same truth for the woman, the I
now sitting by the file cabinet sorting through history,
deciding what to shred, what to save.
She listens to voice mail, I listen to his voice, over and over.
