Keepsake

You make the coffee,
salted and milk-bright,
and we drink in the window

where last night
I told you of June
while eating red currants.

June, who peeled peaches
never lifting her knife
and called the trees by name.

Who told me I was pretty
when she could hardly speak.
Over whom the nurse wept

and said, I’m sorry,
I loved her. I tried
to make you know her.

We tried to share a life.
Now it’s morning
and I can see where I end

and you begin
like a shoreline
or a grave.

Remember the currants,
fragile as glass.
Their wet, bitter rush.

How lucky we were
to taste them, even once.
Even in hunger, how full.