Today I just felt it for the first time

Three months and one day after you died

I realized that these photographs we have of you

Are slowly replacing the subtle familiar

Memory of what it's like to know you're in the other room

To hear you singing on the stairs

A movement, a pine cone, your squeaking chair

The quiet untreasured

In between times

The actual experience of you here

I can feel these memories escaping

Colonized by photos narrowed down and told my mind erasing

The echo of you in the house dies down

October wind blows

It makes a door close

I look over my shoulder to make sure

But there is nobody here

I finally took out the upstairs bathroom garbage

That was sitting there forgotten since you were here

Wanting just to stay with us

Just to stay living

I threw it away

Your dried out, bloody, end-of-life tissues

Your toothbrush and your trash

And the fly buzzing around the room

Could that possibly be you too?

I let it go out the window

It does not feel good