Expiration Dates

I reached into the wool pocket

for a lighter and found your hand instead—

or what was left of it.

A crumpled slip of paper,

blue ink leaking in a bloom

that looks like a map of a country

neither of us will ever visit.

'Bread with the seeds,' you wrote,

'not the dusty kind.'

That was the day the milk was turning,

the day we argued about the date on the carton

until the air in the kitchen felt thin.

We spent our last five minutes

talking about spoilage

while the clock on the stove

just kept blinking twelve.