Eleven Years

Eleven years.

People say the number
as though it were an interval
that could be measured.

But time does not pass evenly
when something is missing.

Some days
nothing happens.

Other days
the absence enters the room
and sits down.

You were children
the last time I saw you.

Now you are adults.

I know this
the way one knows the seasons change—
by inference.

Photographs appear sometimes.

In them
your faces look certain.

I try to recognize the children
inside those expressions.

It is like looking for a shoreline
after the tide has gone out.

Once I believed
the mind could survive anything
if it understood the reason.

Now I see
understanding is not the same as repair.

The years accumulate quietly.

Birthdays pass
without witnesses.

The mind invents conversations
that never occur.

What remains
is not anger.

Not even grief.

It is a space
that has learned to continue.

Sometimes
in the early morning

I imagine your voices
the way they once were.

Not what you would say now—
that is impossible to know—

but the sound of being called
from another room.

Then the house becomes quiet again.

The day proceeds
as it always does.

And the distance
keeps its place.