On Your Birthday

If you were still here,
this is what I would tell you today.

I'd tell you how this morning
when I passed the old man
who sweeps the sidewalk
in front of the pizzeria each day
in what looks like a pyjama top,
a sudden gust sent a band
of yellow leaves scurrying on the street,
tripping each other up, playing
hide and seek around my feet,
then staying behind.

I'd tell you how in the afternoon,
my lungs open and filled with lightness
after a swim, I turned my head
and saw in passing thick bunches
of creeping vines piled up and hanging
from the alley cables, like the ripe grapes
in the yard where you grew up
which remained the same
for decades after you left it;
which, incredibly, is still the same.

In the evening, I thought of you,
my hair scrunched under the hood,
and what you would say
if you could see me, riding my bike
down empty, badly lit streets
in a break after a heavy rain,
the gutters gargling and black asphalt
shimmering. Your little girl

(un unchanging label, despite the years)
is spending another
of your birthdays without you,
and it isn't so bad.
I pick up these shards of the day
and marvel at the solid, ample world
left in your wake. All I can do,
(and it's more than enough, you'd say)
is look at it, handle it, live in it --
and feel you were in it too.