In my more maudlin moments
I picture myself as a young
grieved widower
and wonder
would I stay here and dutifully wash your grave
on each holiday
as local custom dictates
and wander home slowly
with a weak heart and
arthritic knee
amongst the traffic noise
and pollution
would I mount our flight of stairs
having to pause in the wake of the
rabble-rousing youth
of our building
clutching the rail
white knuckled and feeble
I’d turn the key to
the interior of our apartment
like an empty fairground
in Autumn :
the freak show of our basement
where we never went for fear
of what the previous neighbor may have left
the shooting gallery of our kitchen
the barker’s box of our atrium
and the funhouse of our bedroom
with its stilled laughter still hanging in the air
all of this
wound down
packed away
in the small hours of morning
a rainstorm blows in
and I leave the windows open
and the lights off