The things I kept I put away for a time.

Photographs, and other small items that clung to grief.

I kept them at a distance. A kind of shelter

until time made them possible to face again.

I realized, after the immediacy of pain and loss,

that I wasn’t going to let it be about being empty

or deserted, for which I’ve been grateful,

but that it would be about the love that suggested

I put those things away in the first place.