Another day and the man who slept beside me for so long shrinks
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Day after day that shrinking, that fading of him.
Not long dead yet he is losing visibility
though I clasp hard and strain
to smell him on this Hawaiian shirt, to hear his timber.
Another day of not seeing a man
I knew by heart.
More and more spaces between his bones and mine.
Soon I will peer into thin air
and his happy banter will fade
like a train whistle rushing into night.
But today I like how I handle that truth.
Today I hear only a squeal from my own heart
when I step from my car
under the white bulging overhang of cloud
along the great blue bay.
Geese jabber. The wind crashes through my coat
and my body shivers as I pass
the bench where he sat and something
moves hawklike over it and suddenly
I recall his toes were the last
to disappear into the black plastic bag.
I remember the weight of his ashes grey as fog,
heard his knuckles cracking.
My fists clench in the cold shower
of recall.
