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Second pandemic March I
emerge & because I have burrowed
inside my town
a lone furred creature beneath its earth I forget
the turn for Prospect Street
two blocks from my last therapist
her yellow chair that carpet-perfumed air
that terrible silence
one block from the blush-brick church I turned to after
a church whose oak threshold hesitating I
crossed anyway
inside which one bright heavy Sunday
I wept
I can’t even remember what particular grief
Kati was still alive still working
her way out of the world
could it have felt worse than this than her gone
I sobbed
even through hymns sung
too gently to lend me cover
even through a beauty I had never seen
a sermon given
by a handsome butch
easeful in her big body & silver-shot hair
not unlike the woman I will always love
& during the sign of the peace as I
jostled my tasseled clutch my wet
cotton handkerchief
warm strange winter-dry hands reached for me
even then even in the face of this
untidy thing my tears
my human body made manifest
to think of it
to think of being touched