After five years, she comes back with the keys
to budge the door wide on dust and silence
and find it all still here: pots, boxes, a vice
tightening on air, the tin of Terry's
he kept receipts in, hammers spread like runes
on the table. She angles knives
left unpolished up to the light,
cups the washbowl, colder than the moon,
and has his coat in her hands, breathing in deep
to catch the man who came home from work
with coal smoke and fire wrapped in his shirt.
To think he locked this room like a secret
that last workday, and joined a few loose men
turned like flowers to the afternoon sun.