Woman (in mirror)

Woman (Reading) - La Dispute

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