Labyrinthine

Written 6/2

It took me three weeks just to
lift the wire shelves you'd used to hold
your clothes - the shirts and jeans,
workout shorts and lounge pants that overflowed
from your bureau.
I lifted them hesitantly, now empty,
as if I might find some hidden piece of you
lurking on the floor beneath them.
The criss-cross pattern of the bottom shelf
was etched into the carpet, and I followed
its labyrinthine maze with my eyes,
climbing it like a trellis,
reading it like a heiroglyph.
The indentation of the carpet carried
the weight of your clothes, of
pieces of you - the imprint of your existence
pushed into the floor, which slowly
gave beneath you, over time,
to mold itself to your shape.
Soon I will lift and move those empty shelves.
I'll stare at the imprint on the carpet
and soak in the last semblances of you
in my home - of your physical affects here.
But my heart will not spring back like this
carpet - it, too, bears the imprint of
the weight of your existence, but it had
caved in, given in completely to offer itself
a home to your feet when they were tired
to your head when it was weary
For your body when it ached.
Perhaps I can be assuaged
knowing that I, myself, am one of the
living effects of your life here.
The weight of your body on my body,
the changes in me that you manifested.
They are still here, like an imprint,
a handprint, a labyrinthine indentation
that not even time and distance can erase.