A Kinder Solitude

After a year of living alone
I have come to know me.
At times I hate what I see
or who I thought was me.
But then a kinder solitude

of me in birdsong bleating
insistent as the breeze, slow
hollow call of a car on the road,
the words I read sleepily nodding
me or wanting me to repeat them

or write them into being.
The empty space of this room.
Wooden walls’ settling tune: pops, cracks,
to be left alone and consider how
your absence is also me—
no longer waiting.