While Cleaning Windows

I saw you first through rain-streaked glass
as I cleaned the store window, while below us
winter streets awoke and yawning shopworkers
tumbled off the number twenty-seven tram.

Your clothes and style were a cut above
the bovine girls I coaxed from the herd
at Friday hops, to spread across my cold divan.

By spring, there was a thaw in your fixed gaze,
a pink lipped smile as I rehearsed the eulogy
I wrote to send my mother to the grave.

In summer,  I found you broken on the floor
stiff limbs unscrewed, piled by dusty lights
and rolled up cables, while in the glass
the lines of my reflection stared on back.