Like a funeral that travels town-to-town,
she carries my sorrow in a suitcase,
to place I've never been.
I will never see the sunlight skitter
across her street, stroke the fern
that gentles her window.
I've come to dread her moving --
the way a place becomes a place
where she unpacks. Who can live
in my world of abstractions?
She carves her home out of shadows,
and towns like Elkhart begin to exist.
she lives in a mansion, luxuriates
in sex by the pool -- there is no end
to the guesses that infect me.
On Fridays I'd bet she cashes
her paychecks, puts gas in her car.
Maybe she knows a pump across town,
two cents cheaper, but has to take
the curve those kids died on last week.
Imagine her saying, It's not worth it,
paying a quarter more to be on the safe side.
I drove out to the town where we met,
spied dark windows, her old apartment,
and left without talking to anyone.
Driving home, I dreamed the details.
I killed those kids so many times
they started to look like me.
Or sometimes, it was I who died --
mashed and broken in my car --
and they drove the speed limit, got lucky, made it home.
Maybe it was the first year in history
no one from Elkhart died.
After she fills her tank, makes it home,
they'll have a parade.
They love her better than I could.
-- Todd Heldt