Pamela gets off the bus one stop early.

It adds distance to her day,

counted digitally and stored and shown

in a scoreboard of energy she has

lost.

The bulk of the bus disappears along the road,

but it will be back - its route is circular.

There is something foreign about her

walking through a grid-locked neighbourhood,

where inhabitants are sorted like stats in a table

between intersecting streets in the Rosaceae family:

Blackthorn Street,

Rowan Street,

though not Dog Rose or Creeping Jenny.

Maybe it's just her hair.

She dyed it black a month ago.

And now she's home, because that's what

you must call it - besides,

it says, among other names, Pamela, on the door.

Along the garden path some stones are neatly arranged

just like he left them, like a dotted line to sign

and of course she did.

There's a pendant in the hollow of her collarbone.

Her skin is not flawless, but

these jeans are her daughters.

She is not Dog Rose or Creeping Jenny.

So . . .

could she close the door the day another way?

Could she let it fall another way

and spear it through with a just-bought heal

and pick it up and put it on the wall

- and show that it is there?