Of course bears, wedding dresses,
letters for Johns. But also the axe
with butchered bed. The vet’s
prosthetic leg. In Sarajevo, Belgrade,
Berlin, they’ve harbored relics
of soured affairs, sent thousands
touring through loves gone bust:
the Murano glass horse (later
the divorce), the garden gnome
(thrown by the spurned). Here,
you’d think empathy would rise
easy as desire, for who hasn’t felt
the ground’s cold smack, the ache
of the mornings after? Yet love
folds like laundry, the same story
over and over. The woman who gave
the box made of matches may be
hand in hand with another man.
The man who gave the bowl may
be kneading bread for his new wife.
In the end, there’s no marvel
in how we suffer, only in how
we build skyscrapers out of rubble.
