Day 248

All she wants is to go home.
There was a room with curtains she parted
so she could sit at the window, watch people
go by on the street.  The room is gone, the curtains
gone, the people are gone.  Even the street is gone.
All her ten years, living in that house, sitting
by that window.  Friends would come,
call for her to play outside.
I am thinking of how, in the face of great loss,
it’s the simplest things we remember: the feel
of the hem of the curtain between her fingers.
The way the window was streaked
with rain that had fallen, and what it was like
to leap from the chair, run to the door,
turn the knob to the left….