The sun is like a lilting snow,
Sifting through the curtains, diaphanous and slow,
A boy sits at the window,
Stares outside where rusted brambles sway,
The winter gusts cut clouds
Out of the charcoal sky like chunks of ice
From a polar place he knows.

Beneath his feet the carpet covers
Floorboards that are cold. The cushions on the couch
Are worn where his grandmother used to sit,
And quietly read, till yesterday, to him.
The coffee table, mahogany and hard,
Is polished with her presence still.
Time has absorbed the spills of cups
Too durable to break, too precious to replace.

There is no other room to go.
No attic to hide his memories, no cellar
To bury all he must forget. And so he sits here,
In the sun that drifts through the fabric she has hung.
On motes it seems to multiply, draft-aimless
In the air. He feels it on his face,
And in his hair, which he brushes with his hands,
And where it comes from,
Higher than the sun,
And warm like this when everything is cold,
Is where, he knows, she wanted
All her life to go.

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