Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

To see you is to smell 
your wood and lead shavings  
that spill from the gray 
metal pencil sharpener 
nailed to the window sill 
in Mrs. Rote's classroom—
all these decades ago. Today, 
my mechanical one, empty, 

with no shopping in sight, 
I declare I hold you dear.