CLOSE

How close, the sharp insistent
edge to a word that says, Open?

My chest heaves,
slamming like a shed door in the wind.
My long shadow goes out to meet the trucks
rumbling, reverse lights on,
who mate their ends to the loading dock.

I gather up the rough splinters
of packing crates, the bent,
shrieking nails, the corsets of rain.
I wear them all like a wedding dress
of the newly drowned.
I stitch together anything that might break
into the victim's steady handshake.