What the Living Do: Poems

I am living. I remember you.

WHAT THE LIVING DO Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there. And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of. It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off. For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking, I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve, I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it. Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning. What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss--we want more and more and then more of it. But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass, say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless: I am living. I remember you.

Anything I’ve ever tried to keep by force I’ve lost.

the bridge appears when you walk across it—that

Soon I will die, he said, and then what everyone has been so afraid of for so long will have finally happened, and then everyone can rest.

I had no idea that the gate I would step through to finally enter this world would be the space my brother’s body made.

What happened in our house taught my brothers how to leave, how to walk down a sidewalk without looking back.

even if I could go back in time to her as me, the age I am now she would never come into my arms without believing that I wanted something.