Visiting my grandparent's home in the winter of 2003 to see the bright spots on the wall where their pictures used to hang
Papa left a depression on his side
of the bed deep as a grave but narrow
enough to throw an arm across, which my
grandmother did in the purple moment
each morning before sun struck dusty blinds,
so the mattress remained, worn away by
fifty years of sleep carved like the beds
of our glacial lakes, hollows in the hills
lined with serrated shale and muck thick longing
like a heart failing beneath wrinkled breasts,
remained after the weeping pictures were
smothered behind paperbacks, after photographs
were unfurled and secured under tableclothes
with careful even-cut strips of scotch tape
where I'd find them years later when she died
at last died, from the missing metastasized.
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