Furniture of the Dead

This morning after waking, I bathed my sour hair

and dressed in cotton woven by machines. Drifted

to the living room with couches snagged and draped

with children’s old bedsheets and books: protection

for cushions from cat claws while we sleep.

I could be a ghost waking up months dead, wandering

the family mansion full of dusty furniture, suspended—

freeze-tagged kids in Granny’s thin whites on Halloween,

no holes for eyes. But today I am alive. Not dead.

I undress the couch, the chair, to live in my house,

drink tea, watch light crawl across cobwebbed walls

and leaning plants, browning bananas in a bowl.

Today I sigh to sit by this tar-stained, stained-glass lamp,

the one by which I used to read in Laurie’s basement

to be near her—cooly smoking. The lamp holds on like grief

to potential light, the way I do, anticipating night, when

I can pull this chain and that, ignite its double bulbs,

glowing like my friend’s clear eyes through twisting smoke.