Those words reserved for further days
which never would arrive in time
reiterate with speechless grief
in rooms where silence says enough
among two empty chairs and dust
a vacant vase bouquets adorned
the corner lamps unlit since March
unopened tomes on warping shelves
where photos fade by curtain light
and shadows blather through the night
of those no longer seated here
their raucous laughter nowhere near
that absent scent of cinnamon
in this defective denouement
where dialogue comes by a clock
metallic clacking of a lock
sometimes a rare soliloquy
as wind slips through invisibly
to stir a certain manuscript
unfinished so then never gripped
now emblematic in a way
of all the things I meant to say.