This Year

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.