Woman (Reading)

You in the living room

You on a tuesday afternoon

A breeze seen when the curtains move

You by the window with both feet up on the couch

Where you sit and you read and I watch you

From the office the sunlight frames your silhouette

I think of lighting fireworks, I think of pirouettes

I idly write down observations on the scene

Like do the blueprints name the rooms alone?

Do we name them on our own?

We hardly live in there

You with a book propped on your knees

A breeze seen in your coffee steam

I’m in the office thinking back to rules of poetry

It’s fourteen lines, the last two rhyme, what does pentameter mean?

You in the living room

Legs bent at forty-five degrees

I write ab ab, try to find your rhyme scheme

I look for objects on the desk with which to sculpt your image best

What would I name this could I paint it Woman (Reading)? Girl (At Rest)?

I remember it so well watching you shifting your weight, turning the page, I can see it all there

Inside a living room where only I live and never go in

A role in name alone

And I pause where I am for a second when I hear your name

Sometimes I think I see your face in improbable places

Do those moments replay for you?

When I’m suddenly there and then won’t go away

When you’re sitting in the living room reading for the afternoon

Do you put your book down look and try to find me there?

Sometimes I think of all the people who lived here before us

How the spaces in the memories you make change the room from just blueprints

To the place where you live

When you leave here

When you go from a home

You take all that you own but the memories echo

On hardwood floor in the living room

Tore the carpet the scratches below that we found

And the wine stain on the couch

We got drunk and decided we’d still try to move it around

And I can’t tell what the difference is between the ones that we made and the ones that we didn’t make

They all conjure images still

Where you sit and you read in the sunlight aware that I watch

And I live alone now

Save for the echoes

I live alone now

Save for the echoes