You will use it for the flowers the others bring because he is dead.

Or you will use it for dark blue light, the arc of it when, the next evening, the
                 sun cries over the house and sends all the windows to the floor.

A trill of orchids wilts over the rim. You will use them for perspective.
                 The petals fall when you're asleep like petals in dreams, dying to stop.

You will use them for silence, when the room is a rumble of passing trains
                 and his picture rattles over the end tables.

"You'll use it for flowers," I said the other day, placing the blue pitcher on
                 the windowsill, turning it so it balanced there. The windows were cold
                 to the touch because it was almost winter and the wind blew from the lake.

When the relatives left, the house was a hush. The tracks bent into the
                 woods along the lake, the pitcher looking out the window like a great
                 blue eye.

I know you are reading this in the fragility of evening, when the rain
                 comes in from the lake and simmers over the house.

I know you are reading in the half light, your fingers covered with
                 flour, the oven on and a silence from the kitchen where the bread
                 is baking.

The house juts over the lake on spindles. The pitcher paints a blue arc on the
                 floor. There is no one upstairs.

                                                     first published in Ploughshares, 2001