I see you there with your bags of bones,
an x in the corner for disappointment,
just next door to the utility room where
sometimes a man sits and you don't
even know it, and down the hall from 
the antlers, broad as branches, and
the ranks of long sloping horse skulls,
so pale and so tidy, all resting 
in the thick, soft desertion of
a Sunday afternoon.

When I asked how you knew, one thing
from another, you said simply,
Hold it.