She’s coming home to me on the breeze
off the lake.
She forgives me in the best way—tentatively.
Her mercifully cool scent tells of the places she’s been,
the others she’s been with,
the perspective she’s gained. I don’t get jealous
because I was suffocating in her absence,
thought she had gone for good,
knew I somehow deserved it.
Her return says something
she couldn’t have told me if she’d stayed.
We pass the afternoon silently,
listening to all the usual songs playing around us,
and how different they sound now.
Her new mood is the cool depth of the lake,
its way of absorbing the day’s angry brightness
and dispersing it infinitely
of coaxing everything to shore,
no matter how far out it starts.
In the newly chilled air
we can get cozy again.
I give up my thoughts to her
and for a while they drift indifferently
across the lids of my closed eyes
not needing to be said.