They’ve come through the rain
with leaves stuck to their shoes,
hungry, popping cabinets open

and shaking the cereal boxes.
They eat the last of everything.

They don’t wonder 
if the fish at the bottom of its blue
pebbled bowl is asleep

or dead,
nothing is dead.

Like the inside of teacups
they gleam. Never drowned
or hunted, they have no wounds

on their bodies. They are
where they left off—

So how can we explain our constant longing
for touch, following 

and kneeling at doors
closed to us? Wanting to know
what can’t be told:

Faces pressed to keyholes,
each room a diorama,

the dressers, combs and the
little shells.