During breakfast this morning a young hummingbird hovers at your side of the window. Must be looking for your hibiscus-flowered shirt. The Mormon Tea and rosemary are flowering with bees and spring. I’ll bring you sprigs today for the kitchen window vase. And look: that panel of light has begun reflecting from our window into the curve of the garden wall again. When I went out this morning, I noticed how the dark of the juniper was giving depth to the sky. There’s a rabbit I haven’t seen before, crossing the sand near the road with that strange rocking horse motion they make. Yesterday I saw the horse tracks outside the wall are fading in this wind. So much of a relationship becomes muscle memory: like finding light switches in the dark or reaching for you across the bed. Just now, I sorted out my feet under the table to avoid disturbing yours. I still say us. As you asked, I’ve been going through our old photos. Fifty-two years. I have your profile on my desk, the one I took on the train back from our honeymoon on Penang. No one could be as brave as you, leaving family to fly alone half-way around the world to marry. Poets like to mix major events, like the latest pictures from Hubble, with their everydays. I cannot. You insisted on this cancer treatment for me knowing there was no cure for you. As you were being overcome by your faulty immune system, mine was medically suppressed for treatment. When they turned off your machines that daybreak, the guilt that climbed my shoulders pressed down on my neck, wrapped around my feet. There are different silences: humid daybreak on our lane in Bangkok; midday sun on the Outer Banks; snowfall on that dirt road in Leesburg; this empty chair. Your Christmas present remains in my closet. Now, with each notification, each official form, each signature passed under a glass partition, you slip away. A small lizard just jumped up on the yellow olla where I planted your lavender for bees and hummingbirds. We’re motionless.