I hold closest the places I've never been;
the silent history of Grandfather, which is only a word
for uninhabited house, alive in my cheekbones, hairline, dreams,
not even a whisper in the conch of my ears
made of hands and images
brother who died before knowing breath
or heartbreak, leaving us clay to mold him
into the tree of our choosing; how I was born
vibrant as the sun angled through his branches
from this same womb
an empty room remembers
suicide by forgetting, aunt clung to my elbow
—Father?Brother?Son?—perhaps there was a time
I could have been all of these things; it was not then
or now
how a piano once played here,
cousins who flew fifteen hundred miles in different directions
to escape a legacy of locks;
from that distance how he seems so much nearer
and forgiven
without keys
mother is lost within an intricate whiteness—
sheet, gown, bedside carnations, body
heavy as a late autumn snowflake; what sustains
is no longer the same blood that is in me, but
my veins can taste it
how we still know it as song
