by Andrena Zawinski ...Among these landscapes the poor soul winds, vanishes, returns, approaches, recedes, A stranger to itself, evasive, At one moment sure, the next unsure of its existence... --from “Torture” by Wislawa Szymborska 1. day after day in the sunlit hours, all day inside the emptied house haunted by the body I watched at its work, the body’s hands tuning in the radio for some news, shuffling through notes of what next there was to do, pasting photographs onto pages of memory, the body’s memory occupying the single chair at a small table cleared of stories spilled across it, cleared of stories that could have come, of those that might have inhabited the emptied house in sunlit hours, filled now by an afterlife after her and inhabited only by her absence. 2. inside the emptied house in the sunlit hours, day after day, year after year where I went to be of some use, scrub the tub, carry in food change drapes, shake the rugs, take out trash, inside the small and emptied parcel of space I once decorated with holiday bows is a dead woman’s home, my homemade soups and sauces in the freezer still, the bed unmade, her plate and glass at the sink, as if she would get to it soon, and the instructions are there, the notes of what to do with her body on this day she said must surely come, and did. 3. as daylight hours fade and the emptied house dims within a waning light, only shadows remain of what was saved inside the house stripped bare of its small and ordinary treasures, the small pleasures of everyday living stacked on shelves, hung up high, tucked in drawers, saved for a day when they might be of some use, but like idle thoughts now lifeless lay boxed inside a melancholic moonlight, boxed inside this shell of mortar and brick, sobs the songs night sings inside a house emptied of her where I burn candles for all the souls of my dead, watch them dance the fiery tips in a fevered display flecked onto the walls. 4. above the emptied house, the sky’s dim jewels a gaudy light, lead morning round to where I stand and stare, unexpected as the stranger I have become to myself, bleary-eyed reflection in her mirror from where I will travel far away to be yet make a plea as if she can be petitioned by prayer, like some god of mythological proportion, and I want an answer to the prayer I make on bent knee inside the house in plaintive half-light as I call upon all the blessings I thought I bought at cathedrals for her weak heart, flying between cities like they were poems in a book under construction, like this life under revision. 5. as I move further from the emptied house and sunlit days, I think I hear her here and there, at my arm stepping into Pittsburgh traffic, hear her warnings washing over Youghiogheny rapids, her calls inside an Appalachian countryside, her starlit whispers haunting Charleston gardens, my name sung on the trill of birds in sweet Seattle after rain, hear her say upon wind above Chicago lakeshore to fix my eyes upon the sky, hear her down the Western coast where shorebirds dip and dive, and cry and cry and cry. 6. far from the house emptied of her, by candlelight a circle of women for parastas sing against the war inside mournful hearts anchored in silences strung between clumsy exchanges about afterlife. all I know of afterlife after her is that mine is occupied by her absence, that I will live through the long low dreaded peal of funeral bells echoing the hills, the rivers, the sky my suffering heart stilled in the struggle to ascribe some meaning to this, some meaning greater than this grievous moment lying endless before me has become in the deceptive sunlight, haunted by her, by the idea that heaven is only made from what we once were.
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