From Poetry Daily

Now Over the
Empty Apartment

You in the door look back
and are no longer there,

although that is the hall
through which you walked a hundred times
thinking well, what of it?—awake

in the middle of the night—

and that is the window where the sky drew back & night came on

where the planes banked in
scheduled and flashing from the west—

Your hand was pulling shut the shade
and mornings, your hand pulled it up again

though you are not there, you in the door going over the days,
going as a wave goes, that is,

nowhere, and all your lovers now? Those real,
imagined? The sad,
gratified sighs?

All that while,
through the evenings, didn't something
quietly call,

something off in the marginal light,

in the vapor through which
the faces of passengers dimmed

and flickered? That slight
rivering, insistent

beneath the blare of the television, beneath you as well, at the surface

busy with addresses, with pictures & books. You crowded the place,
you in the door

who, looking back now—over the hallway, the shine
of the relentless floor—

can no longer be sure

you are the person indeed who had that body
and lived days in it there.

--a poem by Kate Northrop, from Poetry Daily.