the way a fish sees all the ocean. Or
they are large, one room opening into another
until it seems the whole white winter sky

has settled on the walls. The apartments
are not what you’d expect, they are neat
as pins, and to enter them

is to endure that brief, accidental pain.
They are proud of everything, the divorced men,
proud of the clean white microwave,

the CD player with its growing audience of disks,
the futon that bears the furrow of their sleep
upon its back. They will show you

the photographs of their children when they were young,
stepping from the doors of miniature cars,
pajama bottoms on backwards, or give you

a full tour of the kitchen cabinets, each of which holds
an item or two of use. And when it is time
for you to leave, they will follow you

to the top of the stairs, the door,
and stand there while you drive away,
their faces behind the wood, the glass–