The Front Room

                                           for Pete Coviello

Over beers and chicken tacos
with more spice than anticipated

you told me, Bliss does not replace grief.
I will learn, as you learned,

that happiness and sadness live in the same house,
sometimes nestled side by side,

sometimes on different floors
or just down the hall in another room.

We, too, are neighbors. We’ve moved
closer, each placing our lives into the banana boxes 

I picked up at Shaw’s and later checked for worms.
Tonight, you insisted that I would survive

even this, buoying my beaten heart until it glowed
like egg whites peaked in a cobalt bowl.

“The Front Room” first appeared in Epigraph Magazine.