Something simple
to begin:

Your winter coat hanging in my doorway
blue wool buttons and frayed edges
with one dun hair
clinging to the collar.

                       you left me with these things.


three kisses goodbye
under a streetlight   

                     
The first tasted like every flower blooming in every summer,
every blackberry, every honeybee at the screendoor,
the skirts of every rainstorm, distilled and drank.

The second felt like committing something to memory.
The locking of a jewelry box, the pressing of a leaf,
twisting of a ring; the way in which a muscle remembers.

The third was a hesitation. You had already reassigned me
as a bedtime story, counting these things like sheep.
We stepped over the threshold between now and once.

Your coat hanging in some other doorway
hanging from your thin frame,
packed away in a box until

until,

what we are now is arbitrary
lengths of time and distance.