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Flowers stand out beneath fingertips,

threadbare petals snagged & stripped,

component strings rendered distinct--

How long has it been like this?

I recall it only as blue, robin's egg

pale, warm in the afternoon sun, soft

as it needed to be, but now

I feel how the wood cuts in

beneath the cushion, sunken

into comfortable conformity.

When did it become something else,

something other, all this texture,

all these years? I feel your hands

when I close my eyes, your fingers

separating only to rejoin, to make

new patterns from unchanged habits.

And I understand now why the ground

has been so loose beneath me:

fresh shoots pushing up where

nothing has grown for so long.