Allowance

(9)  

Lights from across the sea or lights in windows; 
lights in the vestibule where they kept vigil for one 

night, after putting her cremains into a marble urn. 
I look at old photographs and in each, chiseled

cheekbones catch the fitful light, touch 
the little hollow above a cupid’s bow mouth. 

After death but before its next ceremony, light 
swelled the bones with a parchment sheen. You 

could have washed them in a marble basin, 
buffed them dry with an old scarf; traced, 

with a finger, the ladder leading out of the pelvis 
to the heart. That is to say, this is how time lets 

our pulleys down one by one, until everything 
unwound can be laid flat: on the table, for the fire.