We touch each other’s arms often
To console ourselves. We repeat
The dialogue that we memorize.

It surprises me how quickly I can conjure
You before me, more familiar to myself
Than my own mirrored face. You sit

How grace made us out, late apples
Quailing already on the branch,

While Frenchmen kissed, I gave man wings.
Reportedly I dreamed of birds. The hills along the post road
once lined the floor of a vast inland sea; behind the foundry,

The audience knows her.
She’s a stock character
in Kabuki dramas—

You know the story? About the dark-eyed girl who seduces
the holy man and ends the long drought.

Can’t you see I’m the one bearing
the perfect attendance medal
across my chest, and an award

I forgot to tell you my husband
died. He was in Spain and something
strange happened with alcohol or water. He loved them

The Bradford pears fringing the city street,
Loveliest of trees, hung blooms in their shy way,
Dangling the sweaty scents of longing, play,

I will go rent a U-Haul, and move to Hackensack,
And a cheap condo buy there, the driveway freshly tarred,
Hard by the Jersey turnpike, a swingset in the back,