The Sound It Made Before

I did it alone with a wedge of cardboard

and forty minutes of bad geometry,

got the frame hung level, went inside,

let it close. Differently.

Not wrong. Just not the sound I'd heard

three years of leaving — that flat metallic clap,

the kind you don't know that you know

until it's gone, and then the gap

is where it was. The old door's on the curb,

mesh bowed, the wind from passing cars sending it rocking

a little on its side. I watched it from the window.

It moves like something still listening.

No one else would feel this. New door works,

seals clean, hangs straight.

I stood there with my hand still on the frame

longer than I needed, trying to locate

what I was waiting for. Like if I held still

the sound would come back, or I'd understand

why the body catalogs such useless things.

I stood there with my empty hand.