She left his life through the back door
the way she had entered
without announcement, or permission
but as someone expected, and known
She had filled small interesting spaces in these rooms
It wasn’t love as spectacle, nothing so necessary
and not simple friends, who compare families,
coordinate lives;
Those ties might have survived
without walls to confine them
It was that they spoke the same archaic language
accented by their separate imaginations.
They expanded vocabulary, argued grammar
and, for a short time in their lives
the words rose out of books
into the air, the bold articulation of such loneliness
created possibility
When she left he didn’t call after her
The air in the house settled back into place
The others who lived there filled his life
He closed certain books, opened others
and grieved
in un-known words