After the Fires Were Put Out

After the Fires Were Put Out

Nothing has collapsed.

The rafters hold.

The kettle remembers

its familiar hymn

each morning,

the gate still lifts

with the same reluctant hinge,

and the maples,

having outlived

every certainty I've ever kept,

continue their annual bargain

with the wind.

If grief required

visible evidence,

I should have none to offer.

No broken glass.

No black crepe

hung from the door.

No physician

standing at the foot

of the bed

with his hat folded

between tired hands.

Only the peculiar absence

of anticipation.

As though someone

had quietly dismantled

the fairgrounds

during the night,

leaving the field

perfectly untouched,

except that every road

now leads

to an empty meadow.

There was a time

when every sunrise

arrived

like a messenger,

breathless,

mud upon its boots,

bearing news

that something

might yet happen.

Now morning

enters politely,

removes its coat,

and sits without speaking.

I have become suspicious

of quiet.

It resembles peace

only at a distance.

Within it,

another country

conducts its business.

A thought begins.

Before it has learned

its own shape,

three others

rush in

to finish it.

The room acquires

too many corners.

Every clock

speaks at once.

A sleeve brushes my arm,

and I rehearse

six possible meanings

before the moment

has had time

to become itself.

They say,

"It isn't so difficult."

No.

The difficulty

has never belonged

to the doing.

It belongs

to the translating.

To discovering,

each hour,

which expression

belongs with which sentence.

How long

one must hold

another's eyes

before warmth

becomes intrusion.

Why laughter

arrives

half a breath

too late,

or too soon.

How everyone else

received a blueprint

I was somehow expected

to remember,

though I was never

present

when it was drawn.

The mind

does not walk.

It startles.

Like a flock

lifting all at once,

casting a hundred shadows

before settling

on a single branch.

By evening

I have lived

through conversations

that never occurred,

answered accusations

never spoken,

rebuilt bridges

no one noticed

had remained standing.

And still,

the house is whole.

The roof does not leak.

The pantry is full.

The dog sleeps soundly

against the threshold,

certain

the world

is exactly

as it ought to be.

Perhaps that is

the loneliest architecture.

When every visible beam

appears sound,

while somewhere

beneath the floorboards,

one small fastening

turns,

and turns,

and turns,

never quite loosening,

never quite holding,

until the entire structure

begins to hum

with the unbearable effort

of remaining

indistinguishable

from all the others.

There are nights

I think of the old wagons,

drawn into their circle,

fires breathing

against the dark,

not because danger

had arrived,

but because everyone knew

it could.

There was comfort

in that expectation.

The watch was shared.

Someone else

was listening

to the woods.

Now the wagons

have been taken apart.

The horses graze.

The fire has gone cold.

Everyone says,

"You're safe now."

And perhaps I am.

But safety,

I have learned,

is not the same thing

as being gathered.

There are wolves

that never touch the tree line.

They learn instead

the architecture

of the mind.