My friend on the couch trembles.

She’s crying because someone in her family
has died/is dying/is dead. She has stopped

speaking in future tense and only says, Now.
The clock speaks in abstract sentences

and she says, We need more wine.
A corner of her life is being rebuilt

by a construction company she hasn’t approved.
A corner and her driveway is being paved.

With gravestones. When she cries, I pour her
a glass of minor relief, another glass

of lessen, and still one more of forgetting, a refill
of liquid assistance. There are too many days

to wait, she says. And there are days
when the world’s veil is so thin, she feels God

in the wind between the buildings.
She is almost mourning, but

knows how close we all are
to being remembered. She is haunted

by leaving, by the ones who already left,
all those doorways swinging open.

A breezeway to loss is where we are headed
no matter how hard we drag our feet.

She says she hates that she can’t stop wishing
for all of it to end, though sometimes in the blues

of the curtain, she still sees hope in hospice.
Kelli Russell Agodon is our Poet in Residence for July. Previously: Downpour.