Before you moved away
With promises we would
See each other again
I imagined the men 
Behind the Free posts
On Facebook Marketplace
As newly-divorced lawyers
Half-brunch drunk in boxers
This hairy bacchanal at
The height of new American
Late-Stage Capitalist luxury 
Who had twenty-inch televisions
More valuable to them 
As empty space on a wall? 
A medieval tapestry 
Of spackle and sheetrock 

I could not imagine surrender
Empty pallets collected dew 
Behind flower-less azaleas
I pushed my overflowing book-
Shelves together because their
Right and left sides fell apart
Without someone to lean on
I accidentally bought two copies
Of Emily Dickinson’s Collected poems
And I put one on each shelf
So each could know the touch 
Of her soft words, but really because 
I couldn’t bear to throw them out
A taxonomy of my own need
To clutch small objects to my chest

But after you sold everything
The couch and the chairs 
Who memorized the outline of your body
The tables and the shelves 
Who kissed your hands and feet
You still had so much shit left
And no time to sell it—
Decades of life forced into 
A gallery of poorly lit photos
On Craigslist and Facebook
You brought each of your friends
A cardboard box full of the poems
You could not bring with you 
I promised to find a place for them.

In the middle of the night
My bookshelves collapse
In a clamorous crescendo
Pieces of your life and mine
Spilled across the dirty carpet
Like dust in a sunbeam,
And even then, I could not
Bear to leave them alone
On the roadside they joined 
Lumber and plywood in the flowers
Of don’t throw that out 
It’s perfectly good wood
I promised I’d find a use for it
For you, I stacked the books 
On the floor against the wall
Alphabetically and chronologically
Catalogued with tears
Why couldn’t I learn to say yes?