SHEN

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The Weight of dust

You can debate grey into the colour
of almost every subject matter, but on
the matter of dates, two weeks late will
always remain two weeks late.
I'm still trversing the stage of denial
to that of acceptance, but before I allow
a pregnancy test to draw a thick red line
across my life again, there's going to be time
to clear things upstairs in the attic.

Three years since I lost my only child.
Two days after her second birthday.
The past is perfectly objective when measured
in that way but sentiment falls like dust
on boxes of clothes - you blow, wipe,
brush, yet the next time you return to them
a film has settled again, and it's as if
you'd never made the effort in the first place.

The neat stacking of cases along these walls
is too tidy to store grief never completely out of reach.
Yet under this roof I find shelter - it's this room
which suffers the most extremes, when the rest of the house
we have carefully built around ourselves
keeps stubbornly to its narrow range.
Up here summer heat is always reluctant to go
at the end of day. Months pass and winter calls,
and every storm which batters the tiles overhead
reminds me that we are all only one layer away
from a season filled with rain.