Among the many signs that I misread,
the boxes of your precious tsatskas
packed to rehearse leaving me
the year before, for why? not wanting
others, for that was when
you gave me leave yet again, was it
that I refused your gift of breaking
my cold spell, nose to the stone
of trying to care for our togetherness
as best I could? and why
did you not leave then, save to find
no wall to bear the weight of all
that is between us but the one
we shared? whatever, while you left
them packed I felt content
in knowing it was just till I could paint
your room, so long undone
it hardly seemed like more as I
delayed, secure in feeling
how you longed to nest again
in quarters brightened by my hand,
adrift in numbers telling we
were almost to the one last push
past where I might coast to make
things nice again, the more fool
I to put off care you might have felt
directly, not to hear the boxes
say you were still waiting for
the cue to go, this time for good.