For L In These Early Days (Poem)

your heart, so full of love, so full of grief

cannot prepare for absence

will not allow to you to sit at the table

alone and say, she will not sit here again

it insists that this cannot be so, this void

looks away determined that she waits

one footstep away from entering the room

and if only you look at just the right moment

she’ll walk in to pull out her chair

the fullness of this daily act so simple, so dear

that without it, the silence swallows all

still you hear your overflowing heart, your stubborn heart

crack and crack and crack