My cousin sent me a fantastic prism window hanging to memorialize Stan. When the sun shines, the crystals throw rainbows across the front room. The baby attempts to grasp the bright lights on the rug. I move it to my office on days I’m attached to my work computer.
When I come home from a run or a walk, I can see the inscribed medallion shining in the window.
I tend to run more than walk nowadays because it’s not an activity Stan and I did together. I deeply miss our long slow walks around the neighborhood. The neighborhood doesn’t feel as much like home.
The word I’m looking for is bereft.
New Year’s Thaw
we walk the damp streets
constellations of Christmas lights
shift behind slatted window shades.
Delphinus, Aquila, Cygnus
warm mists drift suburban scents:
dryer sheets, mildewed basements,
sawdust from a recently felled maple
our footprints on the muddied walk
fade by February
Notes – 3/27/21
3793 plays their baby grand.
Three houses down, toddler twins
rasp their plastic-wheeled trikes
down their driveway. A symphony
of suburban sound. I walk, lock-
step with my dog. Savoring the warmth
of a mild march day. Spearmint on my breath.
Hope in the rays of the sun and that they stay awhile.
The sunset, a gradient violet, and saffron.
Like the delicate petals of early bluets.
I can’t bear to go in yet.
We sit well into the dark.
The streetlights are on.
The little mouse scurries across
my stoop and tunnels into the foliage
beneath my neighbor’s rhododendron.
This is beneath the dog to comment on.
I lean my back against the brick house.
It radiates warmth stored from the day’s sunlight.
I belong. I belong. I belong.
