Verb is a noun.
Grief cycles through her veins
the way a tattered recipe
written in invisible ink
signals an unknowable hunger.
His lips numbed by a vacancy,
a wooden plank tilts in the sand.
A green screen curtain
will not return them to another
continent, bring them home.
Scenes from a vacation decades ago
become the virtual landscape
neither can touch.
An outline of her face
melts into a halo
for a Vineyard seagull
perched on a pier piling
before its hurricane demise.
He whispers, “Unplug
every device in the house.
Walk through Minnesota’s Central Park.
Look for the volta.”

She thinks she sees it
in the thawing pond’s deep slate water,
in the ducks’ visible breath.
Ventilators scarce,
vaccine not ready yet,
dumpster vandals in the alley,
violets bloom in her memory
before she lost her sense of smell.

Visitors ghosted in gowns
he doesn’t recognize ask,
“How do you hug a voice?”
One more beginning with V
will not be named
during this stage of denial.