When you first disappeared, I wept into my hands
and drowned. I swept our house clean and scoured its walls
with my own screaming. Suffering
the sun’s silence, I said nothing, cut
out my tongue and buried it among the lilacs. I watered
my garden of stones until, strand by strand,
I began to tear each hair from my head
to weave a noose. Oh sorrow, sorrow,
buried by my heart, do you know how long
I carried that small bird in my cupped palms?