The Room After

The Room After

We cleared the room in pieces over several weeks
no urgency, no need to force the pace
the shoes went first because the shoes hit hardest
every pair had worn a different face

I left the books the longest on the shelving
I’d run my fingers down the broken spines
and find his handwriting in the margins
a conversation kept across the years and times

the room after is not the room before
it holds the same dimensions but no more
the light comes in the same window as always
but falls on different things than it fell before

the coat that hangs remembers the shoulders
the scarf still holds the coil of where he’d been
I sat in there one afternoon for hours
just breathing in the cedar and the dark and him

They tell you wait, let grief find something solid
let it cling to all the shirts and to the rings
before you let the bulk of someone leave you
before you free yourself from what grief brings

I think we went too fast, we all agreed on
we needed something useful to be done
so we disassembled a life to its seams
called it cleaning up and called it moving on

The room is just a guest room now and neutral
a bed, a lamp, nothing that I can name
and when I pass the doorway in the evening
there’s just the emptiness and just the cold