A Better World is Possible, Ernest Volynec

 

 

For months, she wrote

only of estuaries, which is how I knew

she was leaving.

It was February when she began packing—

sweaters, her collection of dried leaves—

pieces of her vanishing as she would

 

if she stayed. At some point,

I began to help. Folding her mother’s linens

into the bag stowed in our closet,

 

I thought maybe

I could stow myself away, too—

snuggled against her rejection letters

 

and wool socks,

which had begun to unravel at the toes.

Maybe I had begun to unravel, too.

 

One day, I came home to stillness

and a book on estuarial wading birds

open on the ironing board.