Ten Days Ago

it's been ten days since you killed yourself
in the hills behind San Timoteo Canyon
the private investigator calls me to ask questions
the sky is a pale easter egg blue, April, I say: it's
summer overnight. Warm wind stings my eyes, the air
filled with short lived flower smells, I can't tell
what color, the color of you, I guess. These things
should grow on their own, their story shouldn't
burst through me to be told, I am compelled.
I shop alone at Trader Joe's for the first time
in months, almost incapacitated as I choose avocados,
buy hemp granola - our favorite stuff - and
wander through the aisles, suprised by bustling life.
I even ask the cashier if she'll cut a blue,
biodegradable balloon for me, as she just has
for a little girl leaping out of her mother's arms.
I water the garden, contemplate pulling lettuce.
Ten days later, I hang a redwood calendar in the
empty room where you sometimes slept. This isn't
very profound but it takes a lot of courage to
share grief when all around me the prettiest spring
we've seen in years knocks me to the ground, others
I feel sure, would not want to know the deep truths
that water me, too much to ask, no one knows why.
Ten days ago, I touched you last, and I look for
strands of reddish-blonde hair in the bed, your pillow
touches mine. And I managed to throw out the rest of
the food that you bought eleven days ago, what's left
is no longer good, and I couldn't cry today. Something
about passing the single digits, this things is two
handed now, going on to feet and the trail dead ends
the balloon string is still tied around my wrist to
keep me near the ground, is this what you wanted to know?