Three days after her husband left

The wind shook down what she had,
left it all at her feet.
No one wants to be 32 and swimming in pictures taken by
instamatics and poloroids that their aunts and uncles (long since divorced).
This is what happens on a Saturday when the sky is indifferent and, when
trying to escape the hum of a turned on television
a woman plans to surprise her mother with coffee and
store bought cake
but the door is locked and it seems she went away for the weekend
apple picking, with your older and much more lucrative sister
and her lite cigarettes.

So, you go down to the basement with the washing machine that gapes
and dig through boxes-
Half flattened, holiday patterned, cardboard and plastic.
Digging through a life of barbeques, communions, girl scout patches
and the horn-rimmed faces of all your
older brother's old sweethearts.

Where did these girls go? Wasn't this one's name Jane?
Or Sue?
Ghost women, always floating next to a vague uncle, a snack table,
a tinseled tree...where have all those women gone?

The pictures took up the day that
the wind had shaken down from the branches
and she had eaten all the cake herself, leaving crumbs
and crumbs and crumbs

Jane always was so thin.