Slice

She cuts pineapple with a knife
handed down to us by her mother
when we moved here in the winter
and the snowmen looked like
monsters made of water
at a point of indecision.
The crows watch for us
and wait for us to leave
so they can pillage all the seeds
left for the squirrels
out in the backyard by the tree
where she would wait for me.
I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing
when I am thinking over empty space
and picturing the faces of these people
I don’t feel the need to name.
An old duplex made at some point
in the twenties towers over all the weeds
that once were nothing but the dust
of a new spring time that to those
boards felt like nothing new at all.
I don’t know how I’ll feel about the Fall
when things will change again
and all my friends will disappear
like a reflection in a foggy mirror
that never clears no matter
how you try to slice it.