Poetica Magazine

In the house I knew as well as my own,

house that mirrored our split-level floors,

I learned how to house pain when my neighbor

died young, the cancer housed above his frown

lines also found in the too-bronzed house

of his torso. House of mourning, but still

we played house and card games upstairs well

into the night while other households took pause

of their lives to form the house’s minyan.

Later, back in my house, I woke to find him

housed in light at the end of my bed, the same

as when he worshipped at the house of the sun.

Now his widow departs this earthbound house.

Vacant house, I wait still for luster after loss.

For Edward and Evelyn Blau