instructions upon waking

Ignore the balls of dust on the rug, the laundry pile metastasizing, the reams of mail spilling from the kitchen counter. The blanket on the couch does not have to be folded into four perfect corners. The dishes from yesterday can stand another soak. A shower is unnecessary. Overlook the uneven, mismatched topography of the living room, the coats you have cast off on your writing chair, the knapsack of dirty gym clothes, the books you haven't read, the wrinkled inserts of magazines littering the coffee table.

Turn the heat on. Make coffee. Look out the window. Consider the contours of your body. Put socks on. Know that someone else is thinking of you, as they dress and gird themselves for the day. They are thinking, perhaps, of your lips, or your hands. They are thinking of your warmth, your long limbs, your smile, the way you know exactly how to touch them. They are not scanning the house for crumbs, urging you to vacuum. Imagine this a day of no fault-finding, no derision, no pulverizing ache to do a better job. Make breakfast. Eat until you are full.

and when we are through

and when we are through there will be singing and silence,
the book we were reading open to the particular page we loved,
the mug we drank from daily stained with our lips,
the bed embedded with our soft imprint.
there will be a great lifting of hands and wine glasses,
stories resurrected and sifted and catalogued,
the flag with the family crest flown and saluted.

and when we are through there will be what we cannot
take with us: children dipping toes into the first pool of summer,
the garlic fields down 101 and the air heavy with their perfume,
an urge to take a midnight walk, the curtains billowing with spring,
the sound of the guitar after months of neglect.

and when we are through there will be too much and not enough,
the coffee pot will be emptied and refilled, desserts surrendered
to the long table brought in from the garage, a new geography of photographs
in the living room, prayers rendered into song, hands on the backs
of the chairs of strangers, an entire room contained by memory.
there will be dancing even, spontaneous twirls in the kitchen,
or under moonlight, or in the shower, getting ready to greet the guests.
there will be private moments of anguish and the small disasters of grief.
a strawberry will fall from the pyramid and threaten a stain on the carpet.
cracks will appear on the ceiling, in the tub, on the steps leading to the front door.

and when we are through there will be an echoing house, piles of paper
to sift through, phone calls to return and notes to write, a diminishing stack
of dishes. there will be objects found behind a desk, small tokens of fresh value,
a song that will begin to take on meaning, a favorite chair left permanently empty.

when we are through the weeds will flourish, and algae will threaten the pool,
but someone will enter the house as if it were a church, an altar, a rite of passage,
and feel the walls visibly pulsate, as if they were still breathing.

right in front of me

The note says, "Come," and I don't hesitate. I put on my orange jacket and go outside, where a carpet of daisies winds around to somewhere unseen. It is a path but also not a path. Order and also disorder. The grass below is a pulse of green. No one is around but I hear something. Or maybe it's the wind. Or just me, moving my way through the field. I look down again and the note says, "Let it out." Let what out, I wonder, and then I realize I am holding my breath. I let it out. I look down. The note says, "Now what?" and I want turn it over to get the answer but there is none. I want someone to show up like magic and give me a shopping list. I want a loudspeaker to come on, directions from Mapquest, an instruction booklet with finely rendered drawings showing me the hardware I need, my father's voice, the outlines my high school English teacher made us draft before starting our book reports. I'm looking all around, almost frantically now, for where to go and what to look for and how to move and what to say, thinking that I am behind, lost, out of touch, all wrong. And when I look down again, the paper has gone blank, and then it starts to disintegrate right in my hands, and then it's a shred of thing before it disappears entirely. Then it's just my hands, and now all I see are the lines there, arched and curved, railroad-tracked, hieroglyphs of unknown origin, and at first I think, I can't possibly read this, or understand it, but then I do, and I do.