What the Glass Remembers

The window holds the shape of morning long after morning has gone — a warmth pressed into glass like a palm print, fading before you think to look.

In the kitchen my grandmother stood with her back to the sun, her shadow a blue country on the linoleum floor. I walked inside it sometimes, cool and brief.

Everything leans toward something it once had. The river rehearses the stone it wore smooth. The field still breaks where the fence was. Even the air keeps the outline of a voice that said come in, it's getting dark.

I don't know what light is for except this: to make visible the distance between the moment and the memory of it, which is never more than one long breath.