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