The little death

The bed is fissured with shadow.
When the snow came you said you loved me
as much as you ever had, and left
this little death. My animal cry,
a fracture across a field of white.

No more talk

This sentence:
a trail of full stops
sputtering from the sky's wire,
ticking into the telephone's gullet,
its moulded lips still mouthing Oh.

Tinnitus

I ring    with our front door's closing syllable.

I ring    my answer to the phone's silence.

Across this great gap    you hold me    like the wait for an echo.

My body rings and rings.

Filling

In every bite was the bite of it.
The jangling nerve reaching back to you—
to that place in the past where we clinked teeth,
left bitemarks enamelled in memory.
                                                       I've had you concreted in
so that not even a yelp can escape me.
Unfeeling. This hardening
is a way to grieve.