It’s cold again, too soon. Finding warm socks
and my favorite flannel makes me think of you,
as does putting water on for tea, and the quiet
gray of the afternoon. I know this won’t always
be so, and even now my brain is charting new
pathways that won’t lead me to thoughts of you,
and you will get lost in the overgrowth of new.
New life. Lived life. I want to build a shrine
on the forest path we walked together, a place
for the winter boots you left behind, the brass
candlesticks, the pages torn out of books you
tucked in pockets, the cleft in your chin, your
strong body, your tears and your anger. I will
make an offering: there in the ferns, under the
aspen and birch, among the pines, I will lay
them to rest. There they will have a place on
the earth, resting
in the arms of the goddess,
resting in the arms of the woman I was when
I was with you, the woman you imagined into
being, the woman who loved the man you were
struggling to become. Right there, in the ferns,
on the fertile earth of the forest floor, the life we
never lived will take root, for how could it not
grow there?
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