I Took My Place

That was my debt.

It wasn’t second; it wasn’t third.

I took my place and waited. You were on

the other end of my world (a mourning)

but the gorgeous kind, which includes

Edenic roses and crispy apples.

We watched the dismantling of the library

in awe. How could such? And what if?

But the piles of books refused

to be figurative—Gawain dragged to storage.

I wanted to collapse in you or find some shared

furrow that translates roughly into a train

of thought and take it so far past the cedars

that we could recognize our own ghosts.