Elegy for Mrs. Abbot, Room 14

They moved the furniture out in an afternoon.Thirty years of a life organized around other people's children,boxed by people who never once sat in her chairlong enough to understand why the good pens were hidden in the second drawer.

I kept one of her lesson plans, water-stained,margins crowded with a handwriting arguing with itself —not for the lesson. For the proofthat someone thought this hard about a Tuesday.

I don't believe there's a room somewhere that remembers us.I believe there's a drawer, somewhere, with the good pens still in it,and that has to be enough shape for a life to leave behind.