Nothing Lasts
Martha, your cat is hacking again, a hairball’s probably caught in there
and the catnip flavored lubricant’s
gone missing, swallowed by the couch cushions and the plush beige carpet’s
now stained with vomit.
Not calling the vet whose last bill’s gone unpaid. This is impermanence
as our Buddhist teachers always taught us.
It's winter. I prop the window open with a bronze bookend as the radiator clangs,
cold one day, balmy the next.
And just yesterday climbing up from the subway steps I noticed the deli’s shuttered,
the one with the chocolate cannoli,
not even a sign on the door. The Christmas tree seller didn’t show this year,
that pop-up forest with jingles
in the vacant lot across the street, scaffolding’s everywhere. The first smattering of snow
melts on the sidewalk
and my new boots squeak. This moment won’t happen again exactly like this I think,
just like we always talked about.
What you left behind, the curve of the cat’s paw milking the blanket,
condensation between the window panes
rendering Brooklyn’s rooftops dreamy. Running into my neighbor on the stairs,
short of breath from her fifth-floor walkup,
stopping at each landing, keeps me healthy, she says of the climb,
plus I’d miss this,
pointing her cane at the motes glimmering in the light shaft,
dust she says, smiling.
This is what it means to be human I think, dust mixed with glimmer
and today when I came home from work
the florescent light in the hallway, a glare that makes the world unnecessarily harsh
you always said,
had been replaced without notice, that ghetto fixture, wires exposed, with a soft warm globe,
startling at first,
what’s been hidden for years illuminated, scuff marks in the stairway,
holes punched in the dry wall,
from the stained-glass window plastered over for a century, a pinhole of light,
just a twinkle. I am here. You are gone.
Martha, your cat is hacking again, a hairball’s probably caught in there
and the catnip flavored lubricant’s
gone missing, swallowed by the couch cushions and the plush beige carpet’s
now stained with vomit.
Not calling the vet whose last bill’s gone unpaid. This is impermanence
as our Buddhist teachers always taught us.
It's winter. I prop the window open with a bronze bookend as the radiator clangs,
cold one day, balmy the next.
And just yesterday climbing up from the subway steps I noticed the deli’s shuttered,
the one with the chocolate cannoli,
not even a sign on the door. The Christmas tree seller didn’t show this year,
that pop-up forest with jingles
in the vacant lot across the street, scaffolding’s everywhere. The first smattering of snow
melts on the sidewalk
and my new boots squeak. This moment won’t happen again exactly like this I think,
just like we always talked about.
What you left behind, the curve of the cat’s paw milking the blanket,
condensation between the window panes
rendering Brooklyn’s rooftops dreamy. Running into my neighbor on the stairs,
short of breath from her fifth-floor walkup,
stopping at each landing, keeps me healthy, she says of the climb,
plus I’d miss this,
pointing her cane at the motes glimmering in the light shaft,
dust she says, smiling.
This is what it means to be human I think, dust mixed with glimmer
and today when I came home from work
the florescent light in the hallway, a glare that makes the world unnecessarily harsh
you always said,
had been replaced without notice, that ghetto fixture, wires exposed, with a soft warm globe,
startling at first,
what’s been hidden for years illuminated, scuff marks in the stairway,
holes punched in the dry wall,
from the stained-glass window plastered over for a century, a pinhole of light,
just a twinkle. I am here. You are gone.