Click here to listen to Meghan O’Rourke read this poem. When you left, a world Came. Rain,
A morning, a weather
That wouldn’t end.
The windows closed like stitches.
Fingernails grew; nothing to pick at.
The tent of our mother’s body went
Wet around me and clung.
The wind tore through me.
I breathed with two split lungs.
When you left
I stayed, I shook!
Like an instrument about
To be played by the long,
Liver-yellow
Fingers of the sun
