How to Make Someone Miss You

On her thinned
and bone-shrunken frame
when she wears his clothes,
she's dwarfed in the shadow
of the man who made her
his wife over fifty years
ago— She's kept his bright
silk shirts, his pin-
striped suit jacket;
the bucket 
hat he liked to wear
at the beach. 
It's said that smell
lingers in the folds
of what we leave
behind. But this long?
For the yeast of one
life to keep multiplying
on the surface of another,
the body will try to feed
its sugar. Don't ask me
to explain. I know 
there was a spot 
near the collar 
that made me think
of breath, or bread.