some are in the world,
some have a world inside them.
the first thing you forget about a person is their voice
is what my grandmother always said,
never quite remembering the way he said her name.
Rose is the quietness of the forest.
she painted every wall
of her home white
so there could never be shadows.
but night still fell, and staring out
into the black she knew
with one hand gripping
the throat of the past, the other
the fate of her children,
that perhaps the faint echoes
were there to stay.
seated on the faded citron pad
of her kitchen chair, rosewood
beneath her elbows
she presses her ear
to the cold glass of the window.
Through the languid evergreen trees
bordering the roads of Yardley
comes the sound of the train
paler than her thoughts, a dull roar
inside her.
