Without resistance, you step into my body, nudging
Shut the door behind you,

Then proceed to flick on every light.

In the living room, you
Observe the fading portrait of my parents -

Even in death, that demonstration
Of distance, withdrawal, exact
As the wooden frame around their image -

Mourning the white of a wall. You look up

And promise to remember
The graffiti of poems on the ceiling, coagulating
At the speed of injury, grievous life.

Images of others I have loved
Far less than you fade too from these walls,
Melting like clocks under your vision's ray.

Parting a window easily by its curtains, you
Let in the sky's bluest breath, shaking those flowers
Beautiful, lined up like a row
Of happier memories, shadows laughing
Up and down their long and breakable necks.