When my mother suggested I buy you

a hope chest one Christmas, I had to laugh

at such an antiquated idea,

the image of you filling a cedar 

box with enough household linens and bone 

china for our new lives together. So 

instead I watched your beautiful hands pack

your things and head off for an MFA.

That was the year you gave me your poems 

collected in a manuscript. I still 

have it—twelve-point Garamond on yellowed 

paper—tucked in the bottom drawer of a 

cabinet, your words, even now, as raw 

as your inevitable leave-taking.