Nothing. When we realized you weren’t here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours
I’m listening to my father and his brother,
both in their eighties, debate their childhood
from adjoining La-Z-Boy recliners.
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
at the end of a bad year. Trees begin
to outnumber houses. Rain turns to snow
as fields hang like paintings.
