When he goes out in the morning
and comes back at night
his landlady is there
watching him, leaning
forward in her chair, one hand
holding the curtain back,
simply curious, simply old,
having stashed away her knickknacks
in three commemorative rooms,
stored up a winter’s breathing,
forbidden the cold
to come in. She dreams
she’s dying in her sleep
and wakes up afraid, to breath in
again her breathed-out breath.
Who will outlast?
She waits for him, faithful
to his arrivals and to the place;
he brings back life to her,
what he salvages of himself daily
from the shut-out air.
They don’t speak.
She just observes his homecoming,
lifelike in her chair
as the shell of a wan moth
holding to the lace.