You should leave before you hurt yourself,

breathing this air so heavy it dents the bed.

There was never a light in this room,

there were never books to illuminate this silence.

Her loneliness came not of being alone,

but of barring the wind from the curtains,

of barring even a hard verse, its words polished

until they squeaked in tenseness,

of sitting in the quiet and calling it empty, and good.

The curtains are stiff with throttled words.

How many words will you leave behind,

caught in this viscous air like flies?

There will never be a light in this room.

There are too many wordless years pressed

into the fading wallpaper to allow a lamp,

to allow your tongue its free swing.

You should go out of this room

to be unreservedly alone in the wind.

Her ghost and the room and the curtains

can sit in the silent dust, and call it good.