The sun rises late and the days are all grey satin.
I will do a little French then tea with Agnes,
for whom I am now just one more nuisance,
like a piece of fruit gone quietly bad. I will try
to face her with the imagination one might want
of a poem, but she can be difficult, like a person
of ordinary intelligence who thinks disagreeing
is the best way to cultivate a self. I will remind
myself that she overcooks vegetables, has taste
in furniture like a woman who cuts her hair short,
and I will know that I have lost again. Why in love
are things we can’t first see the only ones we can
see in the end? Why in the end is love always like
having eaten a whole pint of ice cream? But I will
listen to what little she has to say, wait a few minutes
so as not to seem peevish, then ask if I might
have my boots back, boots and my gran’s rosary,
and tonight again in a clearer sky that same moon
squinting down at me through the one skylight.

–The Agnes Poems