Monica Berlin

In the only lighted window, an empty chair

in an empty room on a street that

must’ve been named for the way dark

can empty out there—call the avenue

vacant, this boulevard unoccupied,

say the road’s called hollow, say

wooden—where I stare & stare into

that over & over, every single thing

upended, taken down to bare, set again

upright, & then dragged, repositioned

to be caught in some patch of after

-noon sun, to appear anew. Name that

chair a chair, call the window back

-lit against this dark so dark

we can say only night. 

Because there are rooms empty & rooms

someone else empties out, & because

these are not the same, again each chair

becomes how any day marked in the journal

of memory remembered, how we come to

name our grief history or singular—an ours

that means together & sometimes ours alone.

How any record of these years will show

all those places where we once were & then

never were again. Will say everything holy

but our lives—small to another or danger 

to another. Any record will say from a narrow

hallway most rooms were entered through

a solitary door usually left open in welcome,

will keep a count of every chair left behind.

When we mark where we were not,

set the placeholder somewhere we didn’t

leave off & know that spot wasn’t an end,

not some mere interruption, but where

mistaken we thought best to leave

it be, thought let it rest. & how some

-times to mourn in advance of passing

we grieve a rent in each fabric, grief

architectural, solitary, its own dark

room. Later, constructing memorial, any

stone or marker asks for something more

precise, requires of that space a hallway to

join other doors, a collection of, how a house

makes—can choose not to forget all that

comes together, apart—or how a museum.

No one on the curb across the street

this afternoon to apologize to

that building that came down

fast then faster than it might take

to bow our heads, say sorry, note

how much care we didn’t take,

accept blame. How easy it gave

way—mere minutes toppled, then

nothing but wreck or rotted out,

beyond salvage. The hours

watching what’s been broken

haul away: longer. & longer still

the ways everything will someday

come undone. Ruin: that slow

& inevitable, that dismantling.

Our hands at dusk on the railing between almost &

desolate, staring out at a whole lot

of nothing, where once years, fuller

horizon, other places we stood

looking out. Here, mostly the same.

Only not. Here, mostly another gone

by, another season. Here, still, but

without you. Every story we ever told

lilted when we said home. Said you.

Until it didn’t. Each room a room

that was ours. Until it wasn’t. Maybe

the only way to understand emptiness

wholly: to live in it. & don’t you

know how there we lived. Those years, 

neighbors in the hollow. 

Once leaning then taken down to expose

a view never seen & then just as sudden

another building gone up, this time

while we were away. Now we’re troubling

over how those shadows casting over

the porch seem so changed, are enough

to disorient. Tonight maybe to region

here means three white doors opening

west, facing out toward where days

ago nothing but wide open, or means

prefabricated, means put together

in a place not here to shadow over

here, or means nothing built to last

or outlast—the way brick mortared

to brick kept count, lost track. 

How the journal of memory forgot to note

the name of where, the exit off the highway,

which highway cutting through which city, &

how to find once arrived if ever arrived doesn’t

much matter. Even muscle memory will fail.

Even what we thought we’d never not remember

we can’t remember. Sometimes buildings once

now gone or a road narrowed or widened or all

of a sudden boulevarded & landscaped or a new

bridge stretching out or the on-ramps relocated.

But mostly we’re what changes, who slips, who

thought we’d always know the way back to where

we’d kneel a while to say aloud I wish you could’ve

seen this other year gone by & I wouldn’t forget &

with our bare hands we could brush off that stone.

Mary-Kim Arnold