This is still your room

I knock on your door armed
to scream back, to hear
the perennial excuse: I am
working—at the corner
table of your room
behind a mountain of gowns,
arbitration papers, strewn
needles and clouds un-dyed
like your hair. Way past midnight
you scare the dogs, our sleep,
with your vernacular artillery.

I knock on the door, then open
it to the shrapnel of tidiness.
This is no charade. Combs
smiling through their teeth,
bereft of ugly tufts, grease
and stale oil. No bindis on your
mirror. But then I spot you, in
the Picasso above the side-table,
both in the girl and the dove:
merely a print, still signed
with your love.