She said goodbye
to alarm clocks,
appointment books
bank accounts,
cell phones,
welcome mats,
she scrubbed
guilt and regret
from the floorboards,
evicted troublesome
guests, opened
windows and doors
to let her house breathe
till she was clean
as a wind-stripped thicket,
airy as the left-
open spaces of a
Henri Moore sculpture,
the essence of form
(a face, a chest, an arm)
so clearly defined
by being absent.
