Two (Martha Zweig)

Often they both could swear
they overhear their
deaths converse. But which is which?
And they can never make out the exact words.

Months seem to go by.
They hang new yellow cups on the
cupboard hooks. The dreaming
dog scrapes in the upstairs hall and they

know what that noise is. But
then the deaths resume their talk, talk,
just aside, benignly, one or the
other voice exactly like the other.

Whenever she thinks that now she will
leave him she must always also
imagine her death leaving his death,
how one will turn out

to be hers, it will get up
loosely and excuse itself from the other
one, which will be his. He
knows this is why she stays.