Sarah Giragosian: Leftover

I have un-marbled your lunch pail

of its patina of jelly, its bloom of mold.

What to do now but finger the clasp, locked like a jaw?

Each little elegy I write

steers me farther from you, and still there’s this groping

for form. I find the dusky petals of your fingers

on the window glass and the walls;

you are whorled along the blurred rim of my vision.

I don’t write about heaven, just the oculus-moon,

the opening I see from below,

while I assign structure to this grief. I’ll keep you

in shoe boxes, albums, drawers: you’ll have to be dug out.

I thumb the unmiraculous

detritus of your life. All’s qualified and blessed—

all the echoes and distillations of you: plastics

and boxers, the grimed towels strewn

and eddying around the door, the dandruff pearled

on the dresser, the sweat line plumbed down the threadbare shirt.