Her biannual dream
of him gets cut short
by the cat’s early morning
demands. In it, a hotel

room filled with lost
friends bleeds over
a highway bike ride
she would never take

awake. A memory
of drinking vodka
martinis in a tree
under a warm Connecticut

night sky fades into forgetting
the last time she saw

his face: he’s married / everyone’s
married / generalizations
every one of them / a drive
back to New York City after

a Northampton, Mass., wedding /
a carload of drunken
college students at a drive-in
movie theater / a run

by the Long Lane School
( years before the suicide)
at midnight / making love
with a cast

on her foot in a Bronx studio /
those step streets come into play
again / he smoked, she didn’t,
he quit, she started, she quit, the air

they breathe no longer
shared / it’s no longer
early / time
to feed the cat

Graffiti in the fresh
snow concealing a stone
wall. A window

that opens both ways—
from the top and
from the bottom.

The squirrel electrocuted
by a power line.
The lights that go out

temporarily. A freshly lit
match and a beeswax candle.

The ever so slightly
sweet honey scent

of your sweat
that lingers
after you’ve left the cabin.