Toothbrush Before love was spoken and only known at the cellular level, you spent the night in my bed came and went with your toothbrush, I delighted in its presence on my sink. Yours is not in the holder on a weekday morning a year later and even now, I wonder if this is the first clue that you are gone. My eyes scan the room for other absences then I see it held safe in the tub’s ceramic surround between a bar of soap and a razor You were rushing again, brushing in the shower As I rushed just now, headlong into tragedy So used to the familiar territory of chasms, I step in a small crack that still opens to an abyss. Armed only with the bristling ice axe of your toothbrush and my own cellular will I pull myself up from the frozen crevasse Onto the warm expanse of the surface.