Standing in the kitchen window late afternoon heavy in the Southwest United States and he is looking at her and he is thinking and he says it out loud
You are looking so much better
And more so much more
Alive your cheeks are less like the caves and more like
The peaches in the orchard that we walked before the innocence was taken

Through the window old trees converse about the passing breeze and there is a chill in what they say for it is never for us to know.

She turns from the pane and she looks at him and she nods her head and she says
For a time, before it happened, I believed that all things passed and that was so wrong for. Nothing passes, nothing heals, and nothing fades. It is all right here in me like it were the minute before. *She quiets for a breath.
It was not until after, long after that I learned this
That this meant also that nothing dies                                  she looks straight at him now
Nothing dies she says again
Nothing dies and I see the most beauty ever to weigh on my heart
in the face of an illegitimate child disappeared in a swinging screen door or in
the time I am alone awake before anyone wakes up
Or in the neighbors along the way putting a candle in the window for Christmas.             do you understand?
I don’t know why but I live to see these things
I guess because someone must see them. When they come I am the only one that is there to see. And when they pass, they justify my place here and right now, for I am the only one that saw.
The last syllable of her sentence is uttered in a calm note and everything follows and is right,
ugly as it is,
it must be seen and every part of the story is and will be what it is.

They in this moment in this place
among a million
always passing but never passed
always they share the same air, the same words upon this page.

*He has nothing to say so she turns back to the window and its okay and he thinks that he loves her but he does not say it out loud this time.