Residuary
By Amber Adams
On the morning after my death
it will seem like any other day
where you will both wake and sleep
and some events between,
but I will not be here
to change the mop pad, or order
the coffee pods before we run out.
I will be waiting
under a fan of red gladiolus
in my one-day wooden overcoat
for my turn at the fire.
You will probably try to remember
passwords, and notice the bolt
come loose under the sink again.
Somewhere a hermit crab
will look for a new home, pink-
legged and antennae waving
into the vast undiscovered
parts of the ocean
that we know less about than
the surface of Mars. In a poem,
Mars is always a metaphor for someplace
unexplored—the soul, or the soul’s
asylum.
I think about you under
the sink’s open maw, a phone
flashlight, searching for the source,
water finding its way
as water finds its way.
