Now over the Empty Apartment

--Kate Northrop

You in the door look back

        and are no longer there,

although that is the hall

        through which you walked a hundred times

thinking well, what of it?—awake

        in the middle of the night—

and that is the window where the sky drew back and night came on,

        where the planes banked in

scheduled and flashing from the west—

        Your hand was pulling shut the shade

and mornings, your hand pulled it up again

though you are not there, you in the door going over the days,

        going as a wave goes, that is

nowhere, and all your lovers now? Those real,

        imagined? The sad,

gratified sighs?

        All that while,

through the evenings, didn't something

        quietly call,

something off in the marginal light,

in the vapor through which

        the faces of passengers dimmed

and flickered? That slight

        rivering, insistent

beneath the blare of the television, beneath you as well, at the surface

busy with addresses, with pictures & books. You crowded the place,

        you in the door

who looking back now—over the hallway, the shine

        of the relentless floor—

can no longer be sure

you are the person indeed who had that body

        and lived days in it there.