Waiting for His Return
How still the morning,
with the air not yet awake
to move our curtains.
In my husband’s chair
the cat is deaf to the sound
of my slippers.
He waits in a curl,
his head tucked into a memory
of my grandmother’s fox collar.
She pinched its jaw to bite its tail,
fur hiding cracks in her old chin.
In my husband’s chair
a slight fanning of matted fur
sinking,
lifting,
allows my breath
to slip in through my fingers.
I had thought him dead.
But he pinched another day
out of his old bones.
