I look at you now
and see our hate
fizzle into nothing.
Life serves us

lukewarm tea and Burpee
catalogs, babies, and I
cannot find anywhere
the blue smolder

of your eyes
or the hot stream
of you pissing
in the houseplants.

You were everything
then. Coming drunk
into the house, sister,
you were the house.

You became walls
and darkness
and indigestion.
You were the running

of toilet water
and the slap
of vomit into it.
Screaming and all mouths

that opened to that sound.
You were nails
that held the carpets
down and feet pounding

over them. My life
and the beating of
it from me. You didn’t
like me then,

my pink cheeks
and blouses, my quiet
weakness. I look at you
now and see

the green lawn
outside your house
and the children
that burst from you. You look

at me now and say
you love me,
and I wonder:
Is this love?

The dying away
of all else. Today
your eyes are not oceans
or rivers but simple

pools. In your house
I always think
of liquor, tight and hot
in its slender containers,

how it burns
the delicate throat,
sliding its way down
into nothing.