The door stood open wide enough for a crossing.
The window narrowed the low light to a glint.
On the glass, where a mouth had been, remained breath.
The stopped clock held one minute inside its sorrow.
By evening the corners let in the murk.
The mirror showed the room, a beat behind the mind.
The mirror took the room as it was, without a thought.
Left open, the door was only a doorway.
Cold came in under the sill and sat in the gloom.
What was left of the sun lay on the window as a gleam.
The clock kept the one minute, which is a form of mourning.
The mark on the glass came and went with something like a pulse.
What the clock held now was less an hour than a stillness.
A face in the mirror arrived a fraction after awareness.
The breath left on the glass shrank to the size of an ache.
Where the door stood open, the boards ended at a border.
For one moment the whole window was a glow
and then the air in the room went back to its dusk.
As always, the corners were where the room kept its shadow.
A pale mark on the pane persisted: absence.
The west window took the sun once more and let it flare.
The stopped clock was what the room had for consciousness,
while the door had swung as far as it would go, its limit.
The mirror gave back the room and, inside it, grief.
The window was letting the evening out, which counted as loss.
Beyond the door's glass: a head, shoulders, a silhouette.
The air had gone cold enough to have an edge.
The clock's one minute hung open over a void.
Breath clouded the near glass; the far side stayed clear, even around a self.
The mirror, of all things, took the low sun and let it blaze.
In the mirror, what the sun had left was ash.
The air held something older than regret.
The window had gone dark enough to give the room back its being.
Breath touched the glass; beside it lingered a shade.
The clock went on keeping its minute, and the minute was hollow.
The door stood open where it had all day, at its threshold.
The ash on the glass gave way to the air's shade.
The minute kept its grief; the breath on the glass came back hollow.
The reflection kept only its being; the door stayed put at its threshold.