I needed, for months after he died, to remember our rooms-
some lit by the trivial, others ample
with an obscurity that comforted us: it hid our own darkness.
So for months, duteous, I remembered:

rooms where friends lingered, rooms with our beds,
with our books, rooms with curtains I sewed

from bright cottons. I remembered tables of laughter,
a chipped bowl in early light, black

branches by a window, bowing toward night, & those rooms,
too, in which we came together

to be away from all. And sometimes from ourselves:
I remembered that, also.

But tonight-as I stand in the doorway to his room
& stare at dusk settled there-

what I remember best is how, to throw my arms around his neck,
I needed to stand on the tip of my toes.


About this poem
"This year, the old tradition of spring cleaning caught up with me. I unhooked the curtains I sewed a few years ago to wash and press them. As I hung them back into each room, I realized how important it has been for me lately to remember the past, but to place those memories in 'their' rooms, as if-contained that way-I could see and preserve them more clearly."
-Laure-Anne Bosselaar

About Laure-Anne Bosselaar
Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of "A New Hunger" (Ausable Press, 2007). She teaches in the Solstice Low-Residency M.F.A in Creative Writing Program of Pine Manor College and lives in California.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2015 Laure-Anne Bosselaar. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate