June (I realize now in last week’s poem)

I realize now in last week’s poem

I left everyone out.

I made it sound as if I were grieving

alone, as if the doubt

the air around her empty body;

they watched me in the grave

arrange her legs and face. So why

did I pretend to have

my grief without them, without Lois

shoveling dirt or Rache’s

tears or Jane Bell chalking hearts

on the paving stones we’d placed

on top of the grave? It seems almost

a quaint thing to bury a dog,

a thing cut, like pastry shapes, from family

stories, the epilogue

that no one would recognize their grief,

the way you sometimes can’t

find yourself in a group photo,

or maybe I thought they’d want

to remember their sadness for themselves.

But that’s a stupid thought.

I knew I was cheating, and I probably knew

I’d eventually be caught

by Kate when I asked her to read the poem.

She’d probably have said

where are we? Where is the rainbow

Lois drew? Or Rache in the shed

getting the extra shovel? Or me

with my quiet and my quiet

crying? And I’d have had to say

I’m sorry; you were all right

beside me when I put us in

the hole I dug for us,

I mean for her. And there you go—

that’s the reason, I guess.

I thought I could save them all from being

dragged into the ground

again, from hearing the sound subtraction

makes, when it makes a sound.