So many things I thought I would write down:

to avoid grief, I rearrange the furniture,

cut my hair, scrub the bathroom sink. You (who are

effortless and many) tell me I should let go, let

slip the threads which want to escape, refuse

to be knitted. If at last

I can allow the disappearing faces of your childhood and mine

their own beauty,  weather, tears. We are (inexactly)

father and daughter, mother and child, friends

who finish each other’s sentences, lovers who hear

one another’s silence. So long as goodbye

means perhaps tomorrow, perhaps

months from now, I will kiss you again in the darkness

we make by touching, your hand coming upon

my waist almost by accident.