the silence of a room

I was raw with visions this
day of a God with no skin,
so I held my cup out
our kitchen window
and listened to it rain.

I'd get revisited by the terror
in the silence of a room
without her in it. Logic slips,
panics the rational mind
which whispers back,

you just heard her pony
her heels across the kitchen floor
fifteen seconds ago. Where's she going?
But so many cities have burned
since then, you rush,

you fullback from room to room
crying into an empty house.
"Dude? O Dude?" she says at last,
and you kiss the sound on the mouth
before it washes away.
[John Rybicki, 'Love Is the Heel That Knocks Hard Against the Floor' from We Bed Down into Water]