The image of Alice

Our wedding tape faded to mostly white noise

and pieces of cake, grains of rice raining down on tin roofs.

The plates are still on the kitchen table

and the bookmark askew

on the open pages of the dictionary of phrase and fable

in which she loved to read before falling asleep.

It was her way of controlling her dreams, she said

You’re home.

Since that day the downpour came

My feet warily treading the porch towards the squeaky screen door

You took me in to tend to the fire with sweet little nothings

and change the litter box

though the cat was always out,

as was the fire cause it was summer year round

the windows are stained with late afternoon sunlight

fragments that won’t focus

the cat door squeaks,

her paws wet with snow as she balls up by the radiator

You’re just a ghost in this house

the image of us dries up like the cat’s wet footprints

Your home in which I’m squatting

To feed the cat and turn the heat up so the pipes wont freeze