Come to think of it, in a certain light
it looked ochre, all down the staircase,
marking the site of some terrible accident,

except that we all knew it had been tea
and that it was me who had dropped the tray,
collecting every fragment before an audience

of twenty in the hotel lobby, going to pieces
but acting like it was a regular clear-up.
The interior scar I lived with for months

like your death at twenty-one. Six weeks
before you jumped, you gave me your old desk –
but it was only after you’d leapt that I found

the inkstain in one of the rosewood drawers
and thought about the colour of the stones on the shore.