Downstairs

My heart beats underground.
I can feel it vibrate from the 2 miles away
where it lies with her.

I hang a sign on my bedroom door,
asking for grace to keep her distance.
My bed is cloudy and heavy
from tears that fall after midnight.

(I wonder if people can see her death on my face).

Time marches on silently,
and the calendar flips its pages over
month by month — some kind of arbitrary measure
of how I “should be” by now.

I go downstairs
to retrieve our bins of spring clothes
I notice that the clock in the corner
where I had set up her nursery
has run out of batteries.

I wonder how long
the hands on that clock have been still.

It is yet another thing in this room
that has gone lifeless

without my knowing.