Hansel, From Home: An Apology (After Marie Howe’s Gretel From a Sudden Clearing)

There is no way to say it. Your window is collecting webs,
your blackberries ripen and swell and fall

for the squirrels. Every day we spend less
and less time waiting. Sometimes I stand on the roof

and say it into the wind: the first syllable
rises and drops to the ground, and the second

gets lost in the forest between my mind and my mouth,
to be picked apart by crows, who fly away

crying rry, rry, rry. I don’t know how I got here.
How I made it here without you. All I did

was look back when you kept looking on,
stumble through the dark in some

backwards way, kicking mushrooms, breadcrumbs,
tripping over logs and nests, reaching

into your absence and finding suddenly
a recognizable tree, and mother, out front, looking for stars.

I called for you, I swear. So did she.
I try to say it in the morning, sitting on your bed:

but the first syllable gets caught in the webs
of your open window, and when the spider comes

she wraps it up, pauses, whispers so?, and eats.
Every day something of yours disappears.

The yellow dress, the small bird painting, and
one by one the books. I move through our house

trying to say it. I am so, the clock has become
bored by my eyes. I am so, I sleep terribly. I am so