Of Life Hereafter

in the days of your disappearance, the pink dogwood
blushes through my window. while the trees lean toward

a whisper beyond the gleam of marbled glass, i hear you
rise along the garden, suspended in the air between

a skyless plight and nimbus. blame drizzles in this house
with an instinctual reminder: it’s been weeks now since

you came around and i wonder about your frame, wonder
how solitude amended your traits, wonder if your view

from the south room grows lush beneath

a charcoal swell of cloud.

i am learning to miss you through this stifled resurrection.
as mornings blur across the clock, wilting petals gather

casting patterns by your door. its matrix marks the start
of our becoming. it is an untimely dedication:

the iridescent stems outstretched in stratus.

yet this season waits for no one, not the waterlogged
betrayal or ironic steps of reprieve, not the pulsing

of a flood misled to mimic days we saturate in green.
now i cower beneath the foreshadow

of life hereafter,

this microcosm, tempest—

through the semblance of your absence,
monotony moves in reverse.