Leave the futon
folded as a body
kneeling
in a field,
leave
the constellation of nails,
where
there hung a photo of a train
trembling
from a station,
a print
of bodies bound
together
against blue,
leave
the marks scratched
by my
impatient chair,
leave
the lesion from the unsuccessful drill,
the shelves
that gradually sink.
Will the smell
of Sabbath candles
stay after
my absence?
Or will
it gradually sputter
as an
aging bulb?
Will it
rush into your long nostrils,
circling
as dust brushed from a broom.
Will you,
husband who asked me to leave,
return
on an unknowing evening
circling
your hands over your eyes,
and remember
the time grandmother
lowered
an open crab cage into a bay?
Will you
suddenly recall the barechu,
the
arms of the aleph stretching over its heavy head,
the one
legged lamed
balancing
in the mouth a gurgling stream?
One need not
die to become spirit or ghost.
One need
only to leave a place they have occupied,
thumbprints
spiraling on floorboards,
newspaper
crumbled inside of glass.
