This year, you died.
So silence gags my hours.
Summer came, it’s muffled face
An old man, blind, white-eyed.
This year, I wore you as an overcoat,
Your white fingers combed my hair,
and lay for nights with your last breath
stuttering up against my own throat.
This year’s weave was heavy-sewn
In the only blue of that blue.
A day can make a reel, unwind the sky.
It’s seam-line pinning days down.
This year, the dying months are undone.
Falling leaves, unbutton, the world unclothed.
Bathing in the river under the snow
Stripped. It ends as if it hadn’t begun.
Next year only knows you dead.
The singer sews a different tune.
But I’m afraid to wear this new cloth
With nothing of you in its thread.