Pulse

Between one breath and the next,
a slender pause at once puffed and collapsed,
at once minute, at once stretched:

The day you left home for the last time.
The day that green house on a hill
became a frame, a shingle, a loss
and the blind shutting the eye
of a window, once yours, once mine,
at once the nestle and haunt.

Between one breath and the next,
the black map of a green house
scrawled in charcoal and char
on a lung too young to forget
how to breathe, and too far flung
to cleave a line a back to the eaves
that drip as slow honey bereaved.

Is it the same wind, the same house,
the same mold, the same louse
that clings there, crawls there,
caught between what will and was,
what will and won’t be.

Yes, remember the day when a child
lost a tooth for the first time,
and the gap that remains
between one breath and the next.

Image: seabass creatives on Unsplash