Lost keys: the thousandth time. I check your pockets,
the truck, wallet, walkway, yesterday's clothes.
Hours of this, hours of me turning your pockets
inside out, of retracing the day you can't remember,
a strange kind of refusal. I wear my best graveclothes
in search of your heart, which strains against
what the doctor in his little room says is heart failure,
and your brain, which we can see is a struggle
for keys. And you always look like I can unlock,
You always find them, you say. I curse
you for the thousandth time, forced to tie a stick
to the keys in a trick I learned from a gas station;
and my love is a big stick, is a battery of tests,
is the track of your mind thirty years ago,
is finding the key in the oven, or propping up
the tippy kitchen table, or in the tub as a float toy
for my daughter, and your refusal that it ever
could have been there, I found it.